№ №. №. | UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN ----+---+---+-+-+-+-+ º = D-2 4– NS 2-Ti \º „¿ ſaevae R E PO RT INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL OF WOM E N. A S S E M B L E D B Y T H E National Woman Suffrage ASSOciation, W A SH IN G T ON, D. C., º U. S. OF AMERICA, - March 25 to April 1, 1888. - Condensed from the Stenographic Report made by Mary F. Seymour and Assistants, for THE WOMAN's TRIBUNE, published daily during the Council. NATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCATION, WASHINGTON, D. C.: - R U F US H. D. A R B Y, P R T N T E R. 1888. - - PRICE OF REPORT. Unbound copy, - - - - - - - - 50 cts. - « “ sent by mail, . - - - - - . 60 “ Bound copy (engraving of Lucretia Mott), - - - 75 “ -- - - --- - c. “ sent by mail, . - . 90 “ ‘For sale in : - - Boston—At Office of Woman’s Journal, 3 Park street. New York—office of MARy H. SEYMoUR, 38 Park Row (Potter Building). Washington, D. C.–From Mrs. JANE H. Spof FoED (Treasurer of N. W. S. A.), º - Riggs House. ... " º - elphia–From RACHEL G. FostER (Cor. Sec'y of N. W. S. A.), 748 N. 19th Street. TABLE OF CONTENTS. S. º PAGE. ORIGIN OF COUNCIL, . - - - - - - - . 9 THE CALL, - - - - - - - - - 1() t THE PROGRAMME, . ... " - . - - - - - - 11 HYMNS, . - - - - - - - - - 19 RECEPTION TO OFFICERS AND DELEGATEs, - - - - . 23 MARCH 25–SUNDAY Artensoon–Religious SERVICE, * * 24–29 SERMON, THE HEAVENLY VISION, REV. ANNIE. H. SHAw, . . 24 MARCH 26—MORNING SESSION.—FORMAL OPENING OF THE COUNCIL, . 30–50 CouncIL CALLED To ORDER BY MISS ANTHONY, . . . . 30 ADDREss OF WELCOME, MRS, STANTON, . . . . . -- 31 READING OF LETTERS AND TELEGRAMs OF GREETING, - - . 39 - INTRODUCTION OF For EIGN AND AMERICAN DELEGATES, - 44 READING OF IIST OF ASSOCIATIONS REPRESENTED AT THE COUN- - CIL, - - - - . . - . 49 ANNOUNCEMENT OF COMMITTEE ON ORGANIZATION, - o 50 MARCH 26–EVENING SESSION.—EDUCATION, - - - - 51–82 HIGHER EDUCATION FOR WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES, MAY WRIGHT SEWALI, . . . - - - 51 THE WOMEN OF INDIA, PUNDITA RAMABAI SARASVATI, - , 63 THE KINDERGARTEN IN ITS DEVELOPMENT OF FACULTY, SARAH B. COOPER, . - . - - - - 67 RETROSPECTION, LOUISA REED STOWELL, . - - . 72 Co-EDUCATION, RENA. A. MICHAELs, - - - - 75 COLLEGE FELLOWSHIPS FOR WOMEN, CORA. A. BENNEson, 77 INSTITUTIVE POWER, MARTHA MCLELLAN BROWN, - - 80 - MARCH 27—MORNING SESSION.—PHILANTHROPIES, . * * 83–109 - WHAT UNITARIAN WOMEN ARE DOING, ISABEL C. BARROWs, 83 WOMAN As A MISSIONARY, JENNIE FOWLER WILLING, - 86 REPORT of WESTERN Wom EN’s UNITARIAN CONFERENCE, VIC- ToRIA M. RICHARDSON, º * * * 88 iv. Table of Contents. MARCH 27–ADAMs, LAURA McNEIR, - - . - - , 88 PRISON REFORM Work OF ST. LAZARE, PARIs, MADAME ISA- BELLE Bog ELOT, - - - - - . 90 | N. Hospita Is MANAGED BY AND For WoMEN, EDNAH. D. CHENEY, 95 MISSIONARY WORK, HARRIET N. MoRRIs, . - - . 98 THE WORK AND OBJECTS OF THE WOMAN’s NATIONAL INDIAN Association, AMELIA S. QUINTON, - - - 100 | THE WOMAN’s RELIEF CoRPs, E. FLORENCE BARKER, . ... 101 THE RED CRoss, CIARA BARTON, - - - - 103 WOMEN'S RELIEF ASSOCIATIONS, EMILY S. RICHARDs, . ... 107 MARCH 27—EvKNING SESSION.—TEMPERANCE, - - - . 110–128 | WOMEN IN TEMPERANCE, FRANCEs E. WILLARD, - . 110 WORLD'S WOMAN’s TEMPERANCE UNION, HANNAH WHIT- ALL SMITH, - - - - - - 114 TORONTO W. C. T. U., BESSIE STARR KEEFER, . - . 116 - º - HOW TO REACH THE CHILDREN, ANNA GORDON, - - 118 - THE NEGLECTED RICH, FRANCES E. HARPER, - - . 119 POLICE MATRONs, SUSAN. H. BARNEY, . - - - 120 NATIONAL TEMPERANCE HOSPITAL, D.R. MARY WEEKs BUR- NETT, . - - - - - . . 123 THE TEMPERANCE TEMPLE, MATILDA B, CARSE, - - 125 OUR REASONS, Many H. HUNT, - - -- - . 127 MARCH 28–MORNING SESSION.—INDUSTRIES, . - - - . 129–164 INDUSTRIAL GAINS OF WoMEN DURING THE LAST HALF-CEN- TURY, MARY A. LIVERMORE, . . - - . 131 WoMEN IN THE GRANGE, ANNA. M. WoRDEN, . - 137 WOMEN IN THE KNIGHTS OF LABOR, HULDAH. B. LOUD, . . 143 THE WORKING Wom EN OF To-DAY, HELEN CAMPBELL, - 146 Co-OPERATION, THE LAW OF THE NEW CIVILIZATION, LITA BARNEY SAYLEs, - - - - . . 152 WHAT THE KNIGHTS OF LABOR ARE DOING FOR WOMEN, LEONORA. M. BARRY, - - - - - 153 WOMEN AS FARMERS, ESTHER L. WARNER, - - 156 º STORY OF THE LOWELL OFFERING, M. LOUISE THOMAs, - 161 COMMUNICATION FROM THE FEDERATION OF LABOR UNIONS, 163. * Table of Contents. - V. - MARCH 28–EvKNING SEssion—PROFESSIONs, - . - . 165–188 Wom EN As EDUCATORS, PROF. RENA. A. MICHAELS, - . 165 WOMAN IN JOURNALISM, LAURA. C. HollowAY, - - 167 Wom AN IN MEDICINE, DR. SARAH H. STEVENSON, . - . 169 WoMAN IN LAW, ADA. M. BITTENBENDER, - - - 173 Wom AN IN THE MINISTRY, REV. ADA C. Bow LEs, . - . 180 REPORT of Wom AN's INTERNATIONAL PRESS ASSOCIATION, MARTHA. R. FIELD, . - - - - 181 Wom EN IN Journ ALISM, MARION A. McBRIDE, . - . 183 AN IDEA AND ITS RESULTs, AURELIA H. MoHL, - - 184 WOMAN AND FINANCE, MATILDA. B. CARSE, - - . 186 MAE CHI 29—Mo RNING SESSION.—ORGANIZATION, - - - . 189–225 THE POWER OF ORGANIZATION, JULIA WARD HOWE, - . 189 ADDRESS ON ORGANIZATION, MARY F. EASTMAN, - - 195 WORK OF WOMEN’s EDUCATIONAL AND INDUSTRIAL UNION, ABBY MORTON DIAZ, . - - - - - . 198 REPORT OF FREE BAPTIST MISSIONARY SOCIETY, MARILLA M. HILLS, - - - - - - 200 REPORT OF DANISH WOMAN’s UNION FOR THE PROTECTION OF YOUNG GIRLS AND LONELY WOMEN, ADA. M. FRED- ERIKSEN, . - - - - - - 200 THE DANISH WoyſAN's Assocſ.ATION, KIRSTINE FREDER- IKSEN, . - - - - - - . 203 WOMAN’s EDUCATION IN DENMARK, ADA. M. FREDERIKSEN, 206 WoMAN's CoNDITION IN ITALY, FANNY ZAMPINI SALAZARO, . 208 THE WoRK OF SOROSIs, M. LOUISE THOMAS, . - - 215 WOMEN'S CLUBS, JENNIE. C. CROLY - - - - 217 THE WOMAN MOVEMENT IN GERMANY., - - - . 219 ADDRESS ON ORGANIZATION, MAY WRIGHT SEWALL, . - 220 ADDRESS ON ORGANIZATION, FRANCEs E. WILLARD, - . .222 MARCH 29–EVENING SESSION.—LEGAL CONDITIONs, - - . 226–245 LEGAL DISABILITIES, LILLIE DEVEREUx BLAKE, . - . 226 LEGAL CONDITIONS OF WOMEN IN THE THREE KINGDOMs, ALICE SCATCHERD, LEGAL CONDITIONS OF INDIAN Wom EN, ALICE C. FLETCHER, LAW IN THE FAMILY, MATILDA JosLYN GAGE, vi - Table of Contents. MARCH 29—ADDRESS BY LUCY STONE, - - - - - 241 MARCH 30—MoRNING SESSION.—SocIAL PURITY, . - - . 246–291 THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE You FREE, ELIZABETH LISLE SAxon, 248 THE INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION FOR THE ABOLITION OF STATE REGULATION OF WICE, ANNA RICE POWELL, . 252 LETTER FROM JOSEPHINE BUTLER, - - - - 257 ADDRESS ON SocIAL PURITY, LAURA ORMISTON CHANT, . . 264 THE MORAL EDUCATION SoCIETY OF BosTon, CAROLINE M. FRAZAR, - - - - - - . 272 THE STARTING PoſNT, DR. CAROLINE. B. WINSLOW, . - 2.73 ADDRESS, SOCIAL PURITY, HARRIETTE R. SHATTUCK, - . 276 THE WOMEN OF Norway, SoPHIA MAGELSSON GROTH, - 278 ADDRESS, CLARA CLEGHORNE HOFFMAN, . - - . .283 PAPER, MARRIAGE REFORM, LUCINDA. B. CHANDLER, - 284 ADDRESS, FRANCEs E. WILLARD, . - - - . 286 LETTERS, . - . . - - - - 289 MARCH 30—EVENING SESSION.—PoliticAL CoNDITIONs, . - - 292–321 THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED - STATES, ISABELLA BEECHER HOOKER, - - . 292 WoMEN IN Politics, J. ELLEN FostER, - - - 304 PoliticAL PARTIES AND WOMAN SUFFRAGE, HARRIET H. Robinson, - - - - - - . 306 SCHOOL SUFFRAGE IN MASSACHUSETTS, MARTHA A. EVERETT, 309 SCHOOL SUFFRAGE, REV. ANNIE H. SHAW, - - - 311 - THE FLAG AT HALF-MAST, ANNA RANDALL DIEHL, - . 313 MUNICIPAL SUFFRAGE, LAURA. M. Johns, - - - 315 ADDRESS, ELLEN M. S. MARBLE, . - - - . 318. ADDRESS, FRANCES E. WILLARD, - - - - 319 MARCH 31—MORNING SESSION.—CONFERENCE OF PIONEERS, . - 322–368 ADDRESS, ELIZABETH CADY STANTON. . - - - . 322 SONG, JoHN W. HuTCHINSON, . - . - . 326 ADDRESS, FREDERICK Doug LASS, - - - - 327 * - LUCY STONE, - - - - . 331 - « HENRY B. BLACKWELL, - - - - 335 --- Rev. ANTOINETTE. B. BLACKWELL, - - . 340 4 4 ROBERT PURVIS, . - - - - 342 Table of Contents. Vii MARCH 31—ADDRESS, MARY GREW, - - - - - . 844 … . MATILDA JoSLYN GAGE, - - - - 347 - c. HoN. SAMUEL C. PoMEROY, - - - . 348 - « AND POEM, GRACE GREENWOOD, - - - 353 LETTERS FROM PIONEERs, . - - - - . 357 MARCH 31—EVENING SESSION.—PoliticAL ConDITIONs, . - . 369–399 - SEx IN BRAIN, HELEN GARDENER, - - - . 369 WoMAN SUFFRAGE IN ENGLAND, MRS. ASHTON DILKE, - 382 WOMAN’s WORK IN FINLAND, AIEXANDRA GRIPENBERG, . 388 ADDRESS, ZADEL B. GUSTAFSON, . - - . . 394 SENTIMENTALISM IN POLITICS, CIARA NEYMANN, - 398 APRIL 1–AFTERNOON SESSION.—RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM, - - 400–424 zº WoMAN IN THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CHURCH, MATILDA JoSLYN GAGE, - - - - - - - 400 WHAT RELIGIOUS TRUTHS CAN BE ESTABLISHED BY SCIENCE - AND PHILOSOPHY, REV. ANTOINETTE B. BLACKWELL, 407 GOD IS LOVE, ELIZABETH Boy NTON HARBERT, . - . 415 ADDRESS, ISABELLA BEECHER HookER, - - - 418 THE POWER OF THOUGHT, ELIZABETH. G. STUART, - 420 ADDRESS, EDNAH. D. CHENEY, . - - - - 420 - - FRANCES E. WILLARD, . --- - - . 422 - APRIL 1–EVENING SESSION.—CLOSE OF THE COUNCIL, - - . 425–438 ADDRESS, MADAME ISABELLE Bog ELOT, - - - . 425 - - « ALLI TRYGG, - - - - - - 425 THE MORAL POWER OF THE BALLOT, ZERELDA G. WALLACE, . 428 CLOSING ADDRESS, ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, . - - 431 LETTERs, - - - - - - - - - . 439 REPORT OF COMMITTEE OF ARRANGEMENTS, . -- -- - - 447 CoMMITTEES OF CouncIL, . - - - - - - . 456 SOCIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK, - - - - - - 457 APPENDIX, . - - - - - - - - . 459 INDEx, . - - - - - - - - - 461 -E-E-Fe-A-T-4-- 9. For Miss Helen Bright Clarke, read Mrs. Helen Bright Clarke. 30. For Monday, March 25, read March 26.3 34. For eventually (line 10) read essentially. 49. For World's Woman’s Christian Temperance Union read World's Woman's Tem- perance Union. ". 50. The list of Ass’n’s represented should include, NEW ENGLAND HOSPITAL FOR WOMEN AND CHILDREN. Telegate, Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney. 93. In Second line read de for dºl. 114. See erratum page 49. 145. Read Paine for Payne. 166. Read Louise Reed Stowell for Read. - 165 and 181. Read Dioteme for Diatema and for Diotema. º 313. In line 7 read “which they say we women” for “which we say we women.” 318. In line 8 read Marcus Agrates for Lyssipus. 343. In line 4 read Mr. Blackwell for Mrs. BlackWell. 356 and 364. Head Chace for Chase. 407. Read Antoinette Brown Blackwcll for Antoinette L. Brown. 455. In foot note read Emily S. for Jane S. Richards. 458. Read Dr. Ewing Whittle for Whipple. R. E. P. O. R. Tº OF THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL OF WOMEN. Visiting England and France in the spring of 1882, Mrs. Stan- ton conceived the idea of an International Council of Women interested in the movement for suffrage, and pressed its con- sideration on the leading reformers in those countries. A few accepted the idea, and when Miss Anthony arrived in England, some months later, they discussed the question fully with each other ; and, seeing that such a convention was both advisable and practicable, they resolved to call it in the near future. On the eve of their departure from England, at a reception given them in Liverpool, the subject was presented and favor- ably received. Among the guests were Priscilla Bright McLaren, Margaret Bright Lucas, Alice Scatcherd and Mar- garet E. Parker. The initiative steps for an International Council were then taken and a committee of correspondence appointed.* Returning to America, it was decided, in consultation with friends, to celebrate the fourth decade of the woman suffrage movement by calling an International Council. At its nine- teenth annual convention, January, 1887, the National Woman Suffrage Association resolved to assume the entire responsibility *The following is the report of the action prepared that evening by Mrs. Parker: “At a large and influential gathering of the friends of woman suffrage, at Băţiiament Terrace, Liv- erpool, November 16, 1883, convened by E. Whittle, M. D., to meet Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stânton and Miss Susan B. Anthony prior to their return to America, a resolution was pro- posed by Mrs. Margaret E. Parker, of Penketh (near Warrington), seconded by Mrs. McLaren, of Edinburgh, and unanimously passed : “That this meeting, recognizing that union is strength and that the time has come when women all over the world should unite in the just demand for their political enfranchise- ment; therefore - - “Résolved, That we do here appoint a committee of correspondence, preparatory to forming an International Woman Suffrage ASSOciation. “Iłesolved, That the committee consist of the following friends, with power to add to their number. “For the American Center—Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Miss Susan B. Anthony, Miss Rachel, G. Foster. London Center—Mrs. Peter A. Taylor, Mrs. Margaret B. Lucas, Miss Helen Taylor, Miss Henrietta Muller, Miss Caroline A. Biggs, Mr. and Mrs. Charles McLaren, Miss Eliza Orme, Miss Rebecca Moore, fondon; Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch, Basingstoke. jiàºješº Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Bright, Manchester; Mr. and Mrs. J. P. Thomasson, Bolton; Mrs. Mar- aret E. Parker, Penketh ; Dr. and Mrs. Whittle, Liverpool; Mrs. Qliver Scatcherd, Leeds; r. and Mrs. Walter McLaren, Bradford; Mrs. Philips, Liverpool; Mr. and Mrs. Crook, Bol- ton ; Mr. Berners, Mr. Russell, Liverpool; Miss Becker, Manchester. Bristol Center–Miss Helen Bright Clarke, Street ; Mrs. Alfréd Ostler, Birmingham; Miss Priestman, Bristol, Center for Scotl nº-Mrs. Duncan McLaren, Mrs. Elizabeth Pease N ichol, Miss Eliza Wigham Edinburgh. Center for 17:eland–Miss Tod, Belfast; Mrs. Haslam, Dublin. Center for France— M’lle Hubertine Auclert, Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Stanton, Charlotte B. Wilbour, Paris.” 2 10 International Council of Women. and to extend the invitation to all associations of women in the trades, professions and reforms, as well as those advocat- ing political rights. The herculean task of making all the necessary arrange- ments fell chiefly on Miss Anthony, Miss Rachel G. Foster, and Mrs. May Wright Sewall, Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Spofford being in Europe. To say nothing of the thought, anxiety, time, and force expended, we can appreciate in some measure the mag- nitude of the undertaking by its financial cost of over $10,000. The grand assemblage of women coming from many coun- tries and latitudes proves that the call for such a convention was opportune, while the order and dignity of the proceedings prove the women worthy the occasion. No one doubts now the wisdom of this initiative step nor the added power women have gained over popular thought through this International Council. Early in June, 1887, the following call was issued : INTERNATIONAL C O U N C II, O F W O M E. N. The first organized demand for equal educational, industrial, professional, and political rights for women was made in a convention held at Seneca Falls, New York (U. S. A.), in the year 1848. To celebrate the fortieth anniversary of this event, an International Coun- cil of Women will be convened under the auspices of the National Woman Suffrage Association, in Albaugh's Opera House, Washington, D. C., on March 25, 1888. It is impossible to over-estimate the far-reaching influence of such a coun- cil. An interchange of opinions on the great questions now agitating the world will rouse women to new thought, will intensify their love of liberty, and will give them a realizing sense of the power of combination. However the governments, religions, laws, and customs of nations may differ, all are agreed on one point, namely, man's sovereignty in the State, in the Church, and in the Home. In an International Council women may hope to devise new and more effective methods for securing the equality and justice which they have so long and so earnestly sought. Such a Council will impress the important lesson that the position of women anywhere affects their position everywhere. Much is said of universal brotherhood, but, for weal or for woe, more subtle and more binding is universal sisterhood. Women, recognizing the disparity between their labors and their achieve- Programme. 11 ments, will no doubt agree that they have been trammeled by their political subordination. Those active in great philanthropic enterprises sooner or later realize that, so long as women are not acknowledged to be the political equals of men, their judgment on public questions will have but little weight. It is, however, neither intended nor desired that discussions in the Inter- national Council shall be limited to questions touching the political rights of women. Formal invitations requesting the appointment of delegates will be issued to representative organizations in every department of woman's work. Literary Clubs, Art and Temperance Unions, Labor Leagues, Mis- sionary, Peace, and Moral Purity Societies, Charitable, Professional, Educa- tional, and Industrial Associations will thus be offered equal opportunity with Suffrage Societies to be represented in what should be the ablest and most imposing body of women ever assembled. The Council will continue eight days, and its fifteen public sessions will afford ample opportunity for reporting woman's work and progress in all parts of the world during the past forty years. It is hoped that all friends of the advancement of women will lend their support to this undertaking. On behalf of the National Woman Suffrage Association. ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, President, 8 W. 4oth St., New York. SUSAN B. ANTHONY, First Vice-President, Rochester, N. Y. MATILDA JoSLYN GAGE, Second Vice-President, Fayetteville, N. Y. MAY WRIGHT SEWALL, Ch. Ex. Com., 343 N. Penn. St., Indianapolis, Ind. ELLEN H. SHELDON, Recording Secretary, 811 9th St. N.W., Washington, D. C. JANE H. SPOFFORD, 77-easurer, Riggs House, Washington, D. C. RACHEL G. FosTER, Cor. Sec., 748 N. 19th St., Philadelphia, Pa. June 1, 1887. After an extensive correspondence, both in Europe and America, the following programme was prepared : Sunday, March 25. 2.3G =. -N.I. RELIGIOUS SERVICE. Hymn—REV. PHEBE A. HANAFORD. Reading of Scriptures—REV. ADA. C. Bowl.E.S. 26th Chapter of Acts. Prayer—REv. ANTOINETTE BROWN BLACKWELL. Hymn—REv. ANNIE H. SHAW. Sermon–REV. ANNIE. H. SHAW. Subject: The Heavenly Vision. Hymn—REV. AMANDA DEYO. Benediction—REV. ANTOINETTE BROWN BLACKWELL. - ADMISSION FREE. 12 International Council of Women. A/onday, March 26. A/OA’AV/AWG SAESS/OAV. Io.oo A. M. FORMAL OF EN ING OF THE COUNC I L. Music—7%e Promised Land. Invocation—REv. ANTOINETTE BROWN BLACKWELL, Del. American W. S. A. Address—ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, Pres. National W. S. A. of America. Greetings and Letters to the Council. - Announcement of Committee on Permanent Organization. Music. A. V.A.AW/AWG SAESS/OAV. 7.30 P. M. - EDUCATION. Music by the Orchestra. 7.45 Invocation—REV. ANNIE H. SHAW. MAY WRIGHT SEWALL, Principal Indianapolis Classical School for Girls. Aſigher Æducation for Women in the United States. 8.15 PUNDITA RAMABAI SARASVATI. The Women of India. 8.35 SARAH B. CoopFR, Pres. Golden Gate Kindergarten Association. (Paper.) The Kindergarten in its Development of Faculty. 8.50 LOUISA REED STOWELL, M.S., F. R. M. S., Pres, and Del. of Western Collegiate Alumnae. A'etrospection. 9.oO RENA. A. MICHAELS, Ph. D., Dean of Woman’s College, Northwestern University. Co-Aºazecazzoz. 9.10 ALEXANDRA GRIPENBERG, Del. of Finnish Women’s Association. 9.20 ADA M, FREDERIKSEN, Del. of Danish Women's Association. (Paper.) Aleport of Zanish Women's Association: 9:30 CORA A. BENNESON, A. M., L.L. B., (Mich. University), Fellow in History, Bryn Mawr College. College Fellowshifts for Women. 9.40 MARTHA McLELLAN BROWN, Vice-President Wesleyan College, Cincinnati. Zazsätzeźize Pozger. Programme. 13 7 uesday, A/arch 27. *—S--><<-- MOA’AV/AVG SAESS/OAV. Io,oo A. M. PHILANTH RO PIES. HARRIETTE R. SHATTUCK, Pres, of Nat'l W. S. Ass’n for Mass., Presiding. Invocation—ZERELDA G. WALLACE. Music. Io. IO ISABEL C. BARROWs, Del. Woman's Auxiliary Conference, Unitarian Ass'n. - The Work of Unitarian Women. VICTORIA RICHARDSON, Del. Western Women's Unitarian Conference. Io.30 JENNIE FowlFR WILLING. (Paper.) Woman as Missionary. 10.40 LAURA McNEIR, Del. and Pres. Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic. II.05 ISABELLE BOGELOT, Del. and Dir. Prison Reform Work of St. Lazare, Paris. Work of the St. Lazare. I 1.25 EDNAH. D. CHENEY, Pres. and Del. New England Hospital for Women and Children. Aſospitals /Managed by and for Women. I 1.35 HARRIET N. MoRRIs, Ex-Principal Public School No. 39, Brooklyn. Missionary Woré. II.45 EMILY S. RICHARDs, Del. Women's Associations of Utah. 11.55 AMELIA S. QUINTON, Del, and Pres. Woman's National Indian Ass'n. - -- Woré and Objects of the Woman’s Indian Association. 12.05 E. FLORENCE BARKER, Del. and Ex-Pres. Woman's National Relief Corps of the Grand Army of the Republic. 12.15 CLARA BARTON, Del. and Nat’l Pres. American Association of the Red Cross. The Red Cross Society. Music. A. WAZAV/AVG SAESS/OAV. 7.30 P. M. - TE M PE RANCE. Music by the Orchestra. - 7.45 Invocation—JUDITH ELLEN FOSTER. FRANCES E. WILLARD, Del. and Pres. National W. C. T. U. Woman and 7emperance. 8.15 HANNAH WHITALL SMITH, Del. and American Sec. World's W. C. T. U. -- The Zafes; Zvolution of the W. C. 7. U. 8.30 BESSIE STARR KEEFER, Del. Toronto W. C. T. U. 8.4o ANNA GORDON. - Aſozy Żo Reach ſhe Children. 8.5o FRANCEs E. W. HARPER. What Shal/ Be ZXone with the AVeglected Rich. 9.oo SUSAN H. BARNEY, Del. and Nat'l Supt. Prison, Jail, Police and Almshouse Work of the W. C. T. U. -- - Aolice Matrons. 9.15 DR. MARY WEEKS BURNETT, Del. Nat'l Temperance Hospital and Med College Ass'n. - The Temperance Hospital. 9.25 MATILDA B. CARSE. - - The Temperance Temple. 9.30 MARY H. HUNT, Nat'l Supt. Scientific Instruction, W. C. T. U. . . Ozzy Reasons. 9.45 “Home, Sweet Home,” sung by the audience. 14 International Council of Women. Wednesday, March 28. -->>'s-- AA’T/FA’AVOOAV S/ESS/OM. RELIGIOUS SYM POSIU M. SUSAN B. ANTHONY, Vice-Pres, at Large, Nat'l W. S. A., Presiding. Invocation—MRS. J. P. NEWMAN. Hymn—Greezing. MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE. Women in the Early Christian Church. REV. ANTOINETTE BROWN BLACKWELL. Science and Religious Truth. CAROLINE H. DALL. ELIZABETH BoyNíoN HARBERT. Hymn. ISABELLA BEECHER HOOKER. JULIA WARD Howe. ELIZABETH G. STUART. EDNAH. D. CHENEy. FRANCES E. WILLARD. Hymn—The Church Universal. A. VEAV/AVG SAESS/OAV. CLOSE OF THE COUNCIL. Invocation—MARY H. Hunt. Music. ISABELLA BOGELOT. - ALLI TRYGG, of Finland. - ZERELDA G. WALLACE. The Moral Power of the Ballot. ELIZABETH CADY STANTON. - Closing Address. Music. --~~~~ A DJ O U R N M ENT. Programme. 19 wº Hymſ)S. 1. GoD SHALL LEAD Us ON. JULIA MILLS DUNN. Tune—“John Brown.” From Wyoming's rocky valleys to the wild New Hampshire hills, From our Northern lakes of silver to the sunny Southern rills, Lo the clarion call of Freedom all the listening silence thrills Our God shall lead us on. CHORUS. Glory, Glory, Hallelujah! Glory, Glory, Hallelujah! Glory, Glory, Hallelujah Our God shall lead us on. We have heard the voice of Freedom from that far-off Western shore, We have heard the echoes calling, as our fathers heard of yore. Let us sing its stirring music, “Equal rights forevermore l’’ And God shall lead us on.—CHORUS. We have watched the dawning splendor of a promise in the skies, We have heard his accents tender, “Lo ye faithful ones, arise !” “Who would equal justice render, I will nevermore despise,” “Your God shall lead you on.”—CHo. PRAYER. JAMES MONTGOMERY. Music—“St. Agnes.” Prayer is the soul's sincere desire, Uttered or unexpressed; The motion of a hidden fire That trembles in the breast. Prayer is the burden of a sigh, The falling of a tear; The upward glancing of the eye, When none but God is near. Prayer is the simplest form of speech That infant lips can try; Prayer the sublimest strains that reach The Majesty on high. ! Whate'er betides, thy love abides, 3. THE REFor M ERs. JOHN G. WHITTIER. Tune—“Ortonville.” O pure Reformers not in vain Your trust in human-kind; The good which bloodshed could not gain, Your peaceful zeal shall find. The truths ye urge are borne abroad By every wind and tide; The voice of nature and of God Speaks out upon your side. The weapons which your hands have found Are those which Heaven hath wrought— Light, Truth, and Love; your battle- ground, The free, broad field of Thought. Oh, may no selfish purpose break The beauty of your plan; No lie from throne or altar shake Your steady faith in man Press on 1 and if we may not share The glory of your fight, We'll ask at least, in earnest prayer, God’s blessing on the right. 4. AULD LANG SYNE. JOHN W. CHADWICK. Music—“Au'd Lang Syne.” It singeth low in every heart; We hear it each and all— A song of those who answer not, However we may call. They throng the silence of the breast; We see them as of yore— The kind, the true, the brave, the sweet, Who walk with us no more. 'Tis hard to take the burden up, When these have laid it down; They brighten all the joys of life, They soften every frown. But, oh! 'tis good to think of them When we are troubled sore; Thanks be to God that such have been, Although they are no more More homelike seems the vast unknown Since they have entered there; To follow them were not so hard, Wherever they may fare. They can not be where God is not, On any sea or shore; Our God forevermore International Council of Women. Lo! H E Co M ETH. JAMES MONTGOMERY. Tune—“Missionary Hymn.” God comes, with succor speedy, To those who suffer wrong; To help the poor and needy, And bid the weak be strong; He comes to break oppression, And set the captive free; To take away transgression, And rule in equity. To Him shall prayer unceasing, And daily vows ascend; His kingdom still increasing, A kingdom without end. The tide of time shall never His covenant remove; His name shall stand forever, His great, best name of Love. 6. THE Wo R D of TH E Lo R D A Bi D ETH O REV E. R. SAMUEL LONGFELLOw. Music—“Worthing.” God of ages and of nations ! Every race and every time Hath received thine inspirations, Glimpses of thy truth sublime. Ever spirits, in rapt vision, Passed the heavenly veil within; Ever hearts, bowed in contrition, Found salvation from their sin. Reason's noble aspiration, Truth in growing clearness saw; Conscience spoke its condemnation, Or proclaimed the Eternal Law. While thine inward revelations Told thy Saints their prayers were heard, Prophets to the guilty nations Spoke thine everlasting word. Lord, that word abideth ever; Revelation is not sealed; Answering unto man's endeavor, Truth and Right are still revealed. That which came to ancient sages, Greek, Barbarian, Roman, Jew, Written in the heart's deep pages, Shines to-day, forever new Old AND NEw. J. G. WHITTIER. Tune—“ Hamburg.” Oh, sometimes gleams upon our sight, Through present wrong, the eternal right; And step by step, since time began, - We see the steady gain of man. 7. That all of good the past hath had Remains to make our own time glad, Our common, daily life divine, And every land a Palestine. Through the harsh noises of our day A low, sweet prelude finds its way; Through clouds of doubt and creeds of fear A light is breaking calm and clear. Henceforth my heart shall sigh no more For olden time and holier shore; God's love and blessing, then and there, Are now, and here, and everywhere. 8. NEARER, MY God, To THE E. SARAH FLOWER ADAMS. Tune—“Bethany.” Nearer, my God, to thee, Nearer to thee, E’en though it be a cross That raiseth me, Still all my song shall be, | Nearer, my God, to thee, Nearer to thee. - Though like a wanderer, Daylight all gone, Darkness be over me, My rest a stone, Yet in my dreams I’d be | Nearer, my God, to thee, - Nearer to thee. There let the way appear Steps unto heaven; All that thou sendest me In mercy given; Angels to beckon me, | Nearer, my God, to thee, || Nearer to thee. Or if on joyful wing Cleaving the sky, Sun, moon, and stars forgot, Upward I fly,– Still all my song shall be, | Nearer, my God, to thee, || Nearer to thee. - 9. God is LovE. BOW RING. Tune—“StockWell.” God is love; his mercy brightens All the path in which we rove; Bliss he wakes and love he lightens; God is wisdom, God is love. E’en the hour that darkest seemeth Will his changeless goodness prove; From the gloom his brightness streameth; God is wisdom, God is love. - Programme. 21 He with earthly cares entwineth Hope and comfort from above; Everywhere his glory shineth; God is wisdom, God is love. 1O. HoME, Sweet Hom E. *Mid pleasures and palaces, though we may roam, Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home. A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there, Which, seek through the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere. Home, home, sweet, sweet home ! There’s no place like home, there's no place like home. An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain. O ! give me my lowly thatched cottage again. The birds singing gaily that came at my call, Give me them, with the peace of mind, dearer than all. Home, home, sweet, sweet home ! There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home. 11. THou GRAcE DIVINE, ENCIRCLING ALL. ELIZA. SCUDDER. . Tune—“Ballerma.” Thou grace divine, encircling all, A shoreless, soundless sea, Wherein at last our souls must fall, O love of God most free When over dizzy heights we go, One soft hand blinds our eyes, The other leads us safe and slow, O love of God most wise And though we turn us from thy face, And wander wide and long, Thou hold'st us still in thine embrace, O love of God most strong The saddened heart, the restless soul, The toil-worn frame and mind, Alike confess thy sweet control,- O love of God most kind And filled and quickened by thy breath, Our souls are strong and free To rise o'er sin and fear and death, O love of God, to thee Monday, March 26. (Opening.) 12. THE PRO M is ED LAN D. Tune—“Beulah Land.” Dedicated to the International Council of Women. ELIZABETH BOYNTON HARBERT. Our weary years of wandering o'er, We greet with joy this radiant shore; The promised land of liberty, The dawn of freedom's morn we see. O promised land, we enter in, With “Peace on earth, good-will to men: ” - The “Golden Age” now comes again, As breaketh every bond and chain; While every race and sect and clime Shall equal share in this glad time. Toilers in many fields have come With sheaves for this our “ Harvest Home,” While spirits true in every age Have won for us this heritage. O golden dawn, O promised day, When error's lost in truth’s clear ray, When all shall know that God is love, His kingdom here, around, above, The world one equal brotherhood, And evil overcome with good. Then onward march in truth’s crusade, Earth's faltering ones implore our aid, The children of our schools and State, This coming of the mother's wait. O doubting hearts O tempted ones 1 The shadows fade, the sunshine comes; Freedom for each is best for all, The “Golden Rule '’ our bugle call; And as to victory on we move, The banner over us is love. 13. THE TRUE FAst. JAMES DERUMMOND. Music—"" Dennis.” “Is this a fast for me 2'' Thus saith the Lord our God; “A day for man to vex his soul, And feel affliction’s rod? “No: is not this alone The sacred fast I choose, Oppression’s yoke to burst in twain, The bands of guilt unloose ? “To nakedness and want Your food and raiment deal, To dwell your kindred race among, And all their sufferings heal? 22 International Council of Women. “Then like the morning ray Shall spring your health and light; Before you, righteousness shall shine, Behind, my glory bright.” 14. THE CHUR ch UNIVERsa L. SAMUEL LONGFELLOW. Music—“Bowdoin Square.” One holy Church of God appears Through every age and race, Unwasted by the lapse of years, Unchanged by changing place. From oldest time, on farthest shores, Beneath the pine or palm, One unseen presence she adores, With silence or with psalm. Her priests are all God’s faithful sons, To serve the world raised up; The pure in heart, her baptized ones, Love her communion-cup. The truth is her prophetic gift, The soul her sacred page, And feet on mercy’s errands swift. Do make her pilgrimage. O living Church, thine errand speed, Fulfill thy task sublime, With Bread of Life earth's hunger feed, Redeem the evil time ! GREETING. SAMUEL LONG-FELLOW. Music—“Missionary Chant.” O Life, that maketh all things new, The blooming earth, the thoughts of men, Our pilgrim feet, wet with thy dew, In gladness hither turn again. 15, From hand to hand the greeting flows, From eye to eye the signals run, From heart to heart the bright hope glows; The seekers of the light are one. One in the freedom of the truth, One in the joy of paths untrod, One in the soul’s perennial youth, One in the larger thought of God. The freer step, the fuller breath, The wide horizon’s grander view, The sense of life that knows no death, The Life that maketh all things new. 16. HARK1 THE Sound of MYRIAD Voices. HARRIET H. ROBINSON. * Tune—“Hold the Fort.” Hark! the sound of myriad voices Rising in their might; 'Tis the daughters of Columbia Pleading for the right. CHORUS. Raise the flag and plant the standard, Wave the signal still; Brothers, we must share your freedom; Help us, and we will. Think it not an idle murmur, You who hear the cry; 'Tis a plea for human freedom, Hallowed liberty!—CHORUS. O our country! glorious nation, Greatest of them all; Give unto thy daughters justice, Or thy pride will fall.—CHORUS. Great Republic! to thy watchword Would'st thou faithful be, All beneath thy starry banner Must alike be free.—CHORUS. N Ew Co LU M El A. / ANNA. G-ARDNER. Tune—“The Red, White, and Blue,” O Columbia, gem of the ocean, A home for the brave may you be; A shrine for the people's devotion Be the land of the just and the free! Forget not the rights of your mothers, When Liberty’s form stands in view, Or when proudly you carry her colors, And boast of the red, white, and blue! CHORUS. And boast of the red, white, and blue— , And boast of the red, white, and blue— Or when proudly you carry her colors, And boast of the red, white, and blue! O Columbia, list to your daughters! They rally from hilltop and plain, And a prayer echoes over the waters That justice and freedom shall reign. When the banner of freedom floats o'er us, And her sons to her teachings are true, We will join in the soul-stirring chorus— Three cheers for the red, white, and blue! CHORUS. Three cheers for the red, white, and blue— Three cheers for the red, white, and blue— Then we'll join in the soul-stirring chorus, Three cheers for the red, white, and blue. 17. Reception. 23 18. THE EQUAL-RIGHTs BANNER. IBY REW. C. C. HARRAHI. Tune—“The Star-Spangled Banner.” Oh, say, have you heard of the new, dawn- ing light, Bringing hope to our land, and its foes all surprising 2 Our banner still floats as the emblem of right, And the day breaks upon us, for women are rising. And with ballots in hand, at the right's dear command, They'll be true to the flag and will rescue our land; And ever the EQUAL-RIGHTS BANNER shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. The women for truth and for virtue will stand, - And the country be freed from unjust legislation, Anº Heaven then will smile on a purified and, And the Power shall be praised that hath kept us a nation. Woman's ballot is just, so then conquer We must, And this be our watchword—“IN GOD IS OUR TRUST! ” And our EQUAL-RIGHTS BANNER in tri- umph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. 19. THE N Ew AMERICA. ELIZABETH BOYNTON HARBERT. Tune—“America.” Our country, now from thee Claim we our liberty, In freedom’s name. Guarding home’s altar fires, Daughters of patriot sires, Their zeal our own inspires Justice to claim. Women in every age For this great heritage - Tribute have paid. Our birth-right claim we now— Longer refuse to bow; On freedom’s altar now Our hand is laid. Sons, will you longer see Mothers on bended knee For justice pray ? Rise, now in manhood’s might, With earth’s great souls unite To speed the dawning light Of freedom’s day. On Saturday evening, March 24th, Mr. and Mrs. Spofford gave a reception, at the Riggs House, to the officers and delegates of the Council. The large dining-room, artistically decorated with the flags of all countries and the States of the Union, was thrown open, but it was soon so densely packed, as were the parlors and halls also, that the slightest attempt to change one’s position was beset with difficulties. Although the crowd continued from 9 o'clock until mid- night, but few had an opportunity to exchange the civilities of the occasion. However, the discomfort was gratifying. That such numbers desired to pay their respects to the leaders of so many reform movements showed a marked change in public sentiment. º SUNDAY, MARCH 25, 1888. 2.30 P. M. R E L I G I O U S S E R V I C E . Long before the hour of opening had arrived Albaugh’s Opera House was crowded and the aisles filled with persons standing. Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford made the invocation and read Samuel Longfellow's beautiful hymn of “Greeting.” The audience joined in the singing. Rev. Ada C. Bowles read the 26th chapter of Acts, which was followed by the singing of “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” Rev. Antoinette Brown Black- well offered prayer, after which Rev. Annie H. Shaw delivered the sermon. Miss SHAW. The passage of Scripture to which we invite your attention this afternoon will be found in the 26th chapter of Acts and the 19th verse: “Whereupon, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision.’’ In the midst of the beauty of his Oriental home the psalmist caught the vision of the events in the midst of which you and I are living to-day. And though he wrought the vision into the wonderful prophecy of the 68th psalm, yet so new and strange were the thoughts to men, that for thousands of years they failed to catch its spirit and understand its power. The vision which appeared to David was a world lost in sin. He heard its cry for deliverance, he saw its uplifted hands. Everywhere the eyes of good men were turned toward the skies for help. For ages had they striven against the forces of evil; they had sought, by every device, to turn back the flood- tide of base passion and avarice, but all to no purpose. It seemed as if all men were engulfed in one common ruin. Patient, sphinx-like, sat woman, limited by sin, limited by social custom, limited by false theories, limited by bigotry and by creeds, listening to the tramp of the weary millions as they passed on through the centuries, patiently toiling and waiting, humbly bear- ing the pain and weariness which seemed to fall to her lot. Century after century came forth from the divine life but to pass into the great eternity; and still she toiled and still she waited. At last, in the mute agony of de- spair, she lifted her eyes above the earth to heaven and away from the jar- ring strifes which surrounded her, and that which dawned upon her gaze was so full of wonder that her soul burst its prison-house of bondage as she beheld the vision of true womanhood. She knew it was not the purpose of the Divine that she should crouch beneath the bonds of custom and ignorance. She learned that she was created not from the side of man, but rather by the side of man. The world had suffered that she had not kept her divinely-appointed place. Then she remembered the words of prophecy, that salvation was to come to the race not through the man, but through the descendant of the woman. *Number 15, page 22. Religious Service. 25 Recognizing her divinely-appointed mission, she cried out: “Speak now, Lord, for thy servant heareth thee.” And the answer came : “The Lord giveth the Word, and the women that publish the tidings are a great host.” To-day the vision is a reality. From every land the voice of woman is heard proclaiming the word which is given to her, and the wondering world, which, for a moment stopped its busy wheel of life that it might Smite and jeer her, has at last learned that wherever the intuitions of the human mind are called into special exercise, wherever the art of persuasive eloquence is demanded, wherever heroic conduct is based upon duty rather than im- pulse, wherever her efforts in opening the sacred doors for the benefit of truth can avail—in one and all of these respects woman greatly excels man, and the wisest and best people everywhere feel that if woman enters upon her tasks wielding her own effective armor, if her inspirations are pure and holy, the Spirit Omnipotent, whose influence has held sway in all movements and reforms, whose voice has called into its service the great workmen of every age, shall, in these last days, fall especially upon woman, and if she venture to obey, what is man that he should attempt to abrogate her sacred and divine mission ? And, in the presence of what woman has already accomplished who shall say that a true woman—noble in humility, strong in her gentleness, rising above all selfishness, gathering up the varied gifts and accomplishments to consecrate them to God and humanity—who shall say that such an one is not in a position to do that for which the world will no longer rank her other than among the first in the work of human redemption? Then, influenced by lofty motives, stimulated by the wail of humanity and the glory of God, woman may go forth and enter into any field of usefulness that opens up before her. Yet there are those who still contend that men only are able to reason out the problems of life. We to-day do not grant this. But were it true, there are other avenues to trnth than that which lies through the uncertain by-ways of reason. To assume that it were not so is to know why heads and not hearts were made. Some of the deepest, profoundest truths that have ever come to the knowl- edge of the race were felt, not reasoned out. “The world by wisdom knew not God.” The Divine Master and Son of God taught that a pure heart and upright life would quicken the intellect—not “Become learned and you shall know,” but “Obey and you shall understand.” Up through the uni- verse the Lord himself has cast a highway by which we may arrive at spirit- ual and human freedom ; not by knowledge, but by truth, and the deepest insights of truth are given, not by the intellect, but by love. Who, then, but the mother-heart of the race shall be able to read to its deep- est depths the mystery? She shall be able to unearth its profoundest secrets. In the Scripture from which the text is taken we recognize a universal law which has been the experience of every one of us. Paul is telling the story of a vision he saw, which became the inspiration of his life, the turning point where his whole life was changed, when, in obedience to that vision, 3 26 International Council of Women. he put himself in relation to the power to which he belonged, and, recogniz- ing in that One which appeared to him on his way from Jerusalem to Damas- cus his Divine Master, he also recognized that the purpose of his life could be fulfilled only when, in obedience to that Master, he caught and assimilated to himself the nature of Him whose servant he was. He had been recounting the story of this vision to the king and his court. He recalled how he had gone as a persecutor from Jerusalem to Damascus, and how he had had manifested to him on his way the vision which changed the whole tone of his life. A Voice, claiming him as His disciple, spoke unto hissoul, and spoke the word which turned him from his old prejudices and purposes into a new channel and a new life. He who had been Saul of Tarsus, the persecutor of the disciples of the Lord, became Paul, the pris- oner of the Lord Jesus Christ. Permit me to use this vision, which is so familiar to us all, as a type of that which must appear to every one of us who is able to do anything for God and humanity. Every reformer the world has ever seen has had a similar experience. Every truth which has been taught to humanity has passed through a like channel. No one of God’s children has ever gone forth to the world who has not first had revealed to him his mission in a vision. To this Jew, bound by the prejudices of past generations, weighed down by the bigotry of human creeds, educated in the schools of an effete philos- ophy, struggling through the darkness and gloom which surrounded him, when as a persecutor he sought to annihilate the disciples of a new faith, there came this vision into his life, there dawned the electric light of a great truth, which, found beneath the hatred and pride and passion which filled his life and heart, the divine germ which is implanted in the soul of each one of God’s children. The divine within the man recognized the light and voice of the Divine, and answered to the voice which spoke from without : “Speak, Lord, who art Thou?” and the Truth spoke unto him, “I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest.” Then came crowding through his mind new queries: “Can it be that my fathers were wrong, and that their philosophy and religion does not contain all there is of truth P Can it be that outside of all we have known there lies a greatumexplored universe of truth to which the mind of man can yet attain P’’ And, filled with the divine purpose, he opened his heart to receive the new truth which came to him from the vision which God revealed to his soul. All down through the centuries God has been revealing in visions the great truths which have lifted the race step by step, until to-day womanhood, in this sunset hour of the nineteenth century, is gathered here from the East and the West, the North and the South, women of every land, of every race, of all religious beliefs. But diverse and varied as are our races, diverse and varied as are our theories, diverse as are our religious beliefs, yet we come together here with one harmonious purpose—that of lifting humanity into a higher, purer, truer life. Religious Service. 27 To one has come the vision of political freedom. She saw how the avarice and ambition of one class with power made them forget the rights of another. She saw how the unjust laws embittered both—those who made them and those upon whom the injustice rested. She recognized the great principles of uni- versal equality, seeing that all alike must be free ; that humanity everywhere must be lifted out of subjection into the free and full air of divine liberty. To another was revealed the vision of social freedom. She saw that sin which crushed the lives of one class rested lightly on the lives of the other. She saw its blighting effect on both, and she lifted up her voice and de- manded that there be recognized no sex in sin. Another has come hither, who, gazing about her, saw men brutalized by the rum fiend, the very life of a nation threatened, and the power of the liquor traffic, with its hand on the helm of state, guiding her, with sails full spread, straight upon the rocks to destruction. Then, looking away from earth, she beheld a vision of what the race and our nation might become with all its possibility of wealth, with its possibility of power, if freed from this, and forth upon her mission of deliv- erance she sped her way. Another beheld a vision of what it is to be learned, to explore the great fields of knowledge the Infinite has spread out before the world. And this vision has driven her out from the seclusion of her own quiet life that she might give this great truth to womanhood everywhere. By the shores of the Ganges sat a young woman upon whom had dawned a vision of deliverance—deliverance to thousands of her own kind—and, breaking away from the customs of centuries, she is revealing to the world the vision that dawned upon her there of what India might become when her child widows were free to carry the gospel of liberty to her secluded millions. And so we come, each bearing her torch of living truth, casting over the world the light of the vision that dawned upon her own soul. But there is still another vision which reaches above earth, beyond time— a vision which has dawned upon many that they are here not to do their own work, but the will of Him who sent them. And the woman who rec- ognizes the still higher truth recognizes the great power to which she belongs and what her life may become when, in submission to that Master, she takes upon herself the nature of Him whom she serves. We will notice in the second place the purpose of all these visions which have come to us. Paul was not permitted to dwell on the vision of truth which came to him. God had a purpose in its manifestation, and that purpose is revealed when God said to the wonder-stricken servant, “Arise 1 for I have ap- peared unto thee for this purpose, not that thou behold the truth for thy- self, but to make thee a minister and a witness both of that which thou hast already seen and of other truths which I shall reveal unto thee. Go unto the Gentiles. Give them the truth which thou shalt receive that their eyes may be opened, and that they may be turned from darkness to light; that they, too, may receive a like inheritance with thyself.” 28 International Council of Women. Not that they to whom the vision comes may study its effect upon men, if it were revealed to them, not that they may speculate upon the expedi- ency of its practical operation over human lives, not that God lets those to whom he reveals the truth decide as to whether the rest shall receive it or not, not that they are to be the favored repositories into which the Divine shall pour His sacred secrets; but that they to whom the truth is revealed may carry it to a waiting race. This, then, is God’s lesson to you and to me. . He opens before our eyes the vision of a great truth, and for a moment He permits our wondering gaze to rest upon it; then he bids us go forth. Jacob of old saw the vision of God's messengers going forth up and down the world, up and down the mount of visions, ascending and descending, but none of them were standing still. Herein, then, lies the secret of the success of the reformer. First the vision, then the purpose of the vision. “I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision.” This is the manly and noble confession of one of the world's greatest reformers, and in it we catch a glimpse of the secrets of the success of his divinely-appointed mission. The difference between the Saul of Tar- sus and Paul the Prisoner of the Lord was measured by his obedience. This, too, is a universal law, true of the life of every reformer, who, having had revealed to him a vision of the great truth, has in obedience to that vision carried it to humanity. Though at first he holds the truth to himself, and longs to be lifted up by its power, he soon learns that there is a giving forth of that which one possesses which enriches the giver, and, that the more he gives of his vision to men the richer it becomes, the brighter it grows, until it illuminates all his pathway. This was the experience of Paul, and though we saw him this afternoon in our Scripture lesson on trial for his life, yet his words are those of a conqueror, and ring forth with such a triumphant tone as for a moment makes us forget that they are the utterance of a pris- oner, and not of one who has become a conqueror over all his foes. Yet his life was not an idle dream ; it was a constant struggle against the very people whom he tried to save ; his greatest foes were those to whom he was sent. He had learned the lesson all reformers must sooner or later learn; that the world never welcomes its deliverers save with the dungeon, the fagot, or the cross. No man or woman has ever sought to lead his fellows to a higher and better mode of life without learning the power of the world's ingratitude ; and though at times popularity may follow in the wake of a reformer, yet the reformer knows popularity is not love. The world will support you when you have compelled it to do so by manifestations of power, but it will shrink from you as soon as power and greatness are no longer on your side. This is the penalty paid by good people who sacrifice themselves for others. They must live without sympathy; their feelings will be misun- derstood; their efforts will be uncomprehended. Like Paul, they will be betrayed by friends; like Christ in the agony of Gethsemane, they must bear their struggle alone. Religious Service. 29 Our reverence for the reformers of the past is posterity’s judgment of them. But to them, what is that now P They have passed into the shadows where neither our voice of praise or blame disturbs their repose. This is the hardest lesson the reformer has to learn. When, with soul aglow with the light of a great truth, she, in obedience to the vision, turns - to take it to the needy one, and, instead of finding a world ready to rise up and receive her, she finds it wrapped in the swaddling clothes of error, eagerly seeking to win others to its conditions of slavery. She longs to make humanity free ; she listens to their conflicting creeds, and longs to save them from the misery they endure. She knows that there is no form of slavery more bitter or arrogant than error, that truth, alone, can make man free, and she longs to bring the heart of the world and the heart of truth together that the truth may exercise its transforming power over the life of the world. The greatest test of the reformer's courage comes when, with a warm, earnest longing for humanity, she breaks for it the bread of truth and the world turns from this life-giving power and asks, instead of bread, a Stone. It is just here that so many of God’s workmen fail and themselves need to turn back to the vision as it has appeared to them, and to gather fresh courage and new inspiration for the future. This, my sisters, we all must do if we would succeed. The reformer may be inconsistent, she may be stern or even impatient, but if the world feels that she is in earnest she can not º fail. Let the truth which she desires to teach first take possession of her- self. Every woman who to-day goes out into the world with a truth, who has not herself become possessed of that truth, had better stay at home. Who would have dreamed, when at that great meeting in London some years ago the arrogance and pride of men excluded from its body the women whom God had moved to lift up their voices in behalf of the baby that was sold by the pound, who would have dreamed that that very exclusion would be the key-note of woman’s freedom P. That out of the prejudice of that hour God should be able to flash upon the crushed hearts of those excluded the grand vision which we see manifested here to-day? That out of a longing for the liberty of a portion of the race, God should be able to show to women the still larger, grander vision of the freedom of all human kind P Grand as is this vision which meets us here, it is but the dawning of a new day; and as the first beams of morning light give promise of the radiance which shall envelop the earth when the sun shall have arisen in all its splendor, so there comes to us a prophecy of that glorious day when the vision which we are now beholding, which is beaming in the soul of one, shall enter the hearts and transfigure the lives of all. * * * During the collection the audience joined in singing “God is Love '’ and “Is this a Fast for me,” after which the bene- diction was pronounced by Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell. 30 International Council of Women. - FORMAL OPENING OF THE COUNCIL. MONDAY, March 25, 10 A. M. Victor Hugo’s prophecy, “that the nineteenth century belongs to woman,” seemed fulfilled as one gazed upon the Scene presented at Albaugh’s Opera House this morning. Under the shadow of the Capitol, made historic by the fiery eloquence of a long line of American patriots, who have led the advance-guard of the world’s onward march to liberty, Were assembled an immense audience of equally patriotic Women from every part of the United States, whose faithful services to their country, alike in peace and war, have entitled them to recognition as citizens of a republic in the parliaments of the world. The vast auditorium, perfect in its proportions and arrange- ments, was richly decorated with the flags of all nations and of every State in the Union. The platform was fragrant with evergreens and flowers, brilliant with rich furniture, crowded with distinguished women, while soft music, with its universal language, attuned all hearts to harmony. The beautiful por- trait of the sainted Lucretia Mott, surrounded with Smilax and lilies of the valley, seemed to sanctify the whole scene and to give a touch of pathos to all the proceedings. The hour was impressive and significant as representative women gathered on the platform from England, Scotland, Ire- land, France, Denmark, Norway, Finland, India, Canada, and every part of the United States, all honored guests of the National Woman Suffrage Association. In calling the meeting to order, Miss Anthony remarked : As you have noticed in the call and in the various announcements for this Council, the specific purpose in calling it during this year and in this coun- try was because of the fact that the first convention ever held in the world, by women, occurred just forty years ago. The meeting will be opened with prayer by Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, who was the first woman ever ordained as a minister in this nation, and, I think, in any nation on the globe. - After the invocation by Mrs. Blackwell, Elizabeth Boynton Formal Opening of the Council. 31 - Harbert read the hymn which she had written for the occasion, “The Promised Land.” Addressing the audience, she said : Will you join with us, carrying with the reading your thought, in order that you may unite in singing the twelfth hymn, entitled “The Promised Land,’’ into which we shall enter with this our Moses and our Joshua (re- ferring to Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony) this significant morning. The entire audience joined in the singing of the hymn. Miss ANTHONY : The notice issued forty years ago for that first convention, if I remember rightly, did not have any signatures attached, but, nevertheless, the two moving spirits in originating the call and in carrying forward the meeting were those of our Sainted Lucretia Mott, of Philadelphia, and Eliz- abeth Cady Stanton, who is with us to-day. Without any particular words that shall call to your mind the vast change in the world these last forty years, I will say that forty years ago women had no place anywhere except in their homes, no pecuniary independence, no purpose in life Save that which came through marriage. From a condition, as many of you can re- member, in which no woman thought of such a thing as earning her bread by any other means than sewing, teaching, cooking, or factory work, in these later years the way has been opened to every avenue of industry— to every profession—whereby woman to-day stands almost the peer of man in her advantages for pecuniary independence. What is true in the world of work is true in education, is true everywhere. Men have granted us, in the privileges and civil rights of society, which we have been demanding, everything, almost, but the pivotal right, the one that underlies all other rights, the right with which citizens of this republic may protect themselves. I have the pleasure of introducing to you this morning the woman who not only joined with Mrs. Mott in calling the first convention, but who for the last twenty years nearly has been President of the National Woman Suf- frage Association—Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton. With enthusiastic clapping of hands and waving of hand- kerchiefs, the audience arose to honor Mrs. Stanton. ADDRESS OF WELCOME. MRs. STANTON: We are assembled here to-day to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the first organized demand made by women for the right of suffrage. The Initiative steps were taken in my native State. In 1848 two conventions were held in Central New York, and the same year the Mar- ried Women's Property Bill passed the legislature. Other conventions were soon called in Ohio, Indiana, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and other States, one after another, adopted New York's advance legislation. This started 32 International Council of Women. the greatest movement for human liberty recorded on the pages of history— a demand for freedom to one-half the entire race; the key-note struck in this country in '48 has been echoed round the world. And to-day, to celebrate our fortieth anniversary, we have representatives in person or by letter from nearly every State in the Union, from Great Britain, France, Germany, Finland, Italy, Sweden, India, Denmark, Norway, and Russia. It has been our custom to mark the passing years by holding meetings of the suffrage societies on each decade, but for this we decided a broader recognition of all the reform associations that have been the natural outgrowth of the suffrage agitation in the Old World as well as the New. In the great National and State conventions for education, temperance, and religion, even thirty years ago, woman's voice was never heard. The battles fought by the pioneers in the suffrage movement to secure a foothold for woman on these platforms have been eloquently described many times by Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Antoinette Brown, and I hope during this Council they will be rehearsed once more, for the benefit of those who, while holding the vantage ground they secured, are afraid of the principles by which it was gained. The civil and political position of woman, when I first understood its real significance, was enough to destroy all faith in the vitality of republican principles. Half a century ago the women of America were bond slaves, under the old common law of England. Their rights of person and property were under the absolute control of fathers and husbands. They were shut out of the schools and colleges, the trades and professions, and all offices under government; paid the most meager wages in the ordi- nary industries of life, and denied everywhere the necessary opportunities for their best development. Worse still, women had no proper appreciation of themselves as factors in civilization. Believing self-denial a higher virtue than self-development, they ignorantly made ladders of themselves by which fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons reached their highest ambitions, creat- ing an impassable gulf between them and those they loved that no magnetic chords of affection or gratitude could span. Nothing was more common forty years ago than to see the sons of a family educated, while the daughters remained in ignorance; husbands at ease in the higher circles, in which their wives were unprepared to move. Like the foolish virgins in the parable, women everywhere in serving others forgot to keep their own lamps trimmed and burning, and when the great feasts of life were spread, to them the doors were shut. Four years ago, at a reception in Liverpool, given to Miss Anthony and myself, the question of an international convention was discussed, and SO favorably received that committees of correspondence were appointed to ascertain what the general feeling might be. While the response from the different countries was encouraging, the general feeling seemed to point to America as the country to make the first experiment. Accordingly the Formal Opening of the Council. 33 National Woman Suffrage Association assumed the responsibility of calling this International Council. Though we can not all share in the honors of the toil that has made this grand gathering possible, we can share in the joy of welcoming to our shores the noble women from foreign lands. We can benefit, too, in the broader interests and more liberal opinions that association with the people of other countries must necessarily bring to us. “The world is my country and all mankind my countrymen” is a motto that can not be echoed and re-echoed round the globe too often, to keep our sympathies alive to the weal and woe of the human race. In welcoming representatives from other lands here to-day, we do not feel that you are Strangers and foreigners, for the women of all nationalities, in the artificial distinctions of sex, have a universal sense of injustice, that forms a common bond of union between them. Whether our feet are compressed in iron shoes, our faces hidden with veils and masks, whether yoked with cows to draw the plow through its furrows, or classed with idiots, lunatics, and criminals in the laws and constitutions of the state, the principle is the same, for the humiliations of spirit are as real as the visible badges of servitude. A difference in government, religion, laws, and social customs makes but little change in the relative status of woman to the self-constituted governing classes, so long as subordination in all nations is the rule of her being. Through suffering we have learned the open sesame to the hearts of each other. There is a language of universal significance, more subtle than that used in the busy marts of trade, that should be called the mother-tongue, by which with a sigh or a tear, a gesture, a glance of the eye, we know the experiences of each other in the varied forms of slavery. With the spirit forever in bondage, it is the same whether housed in golden cages, with every want supplied, or wandering in the dreary deserts of life friendless and forsaken. Now that our globe is girdled with railroads, steamships, and electric wires, every pulsation of your hearts is known to us. Long ago we heard the deep yearnings of your souls for freedom responsive to our own. Mary Wolstonecraft, Mesdames de Stael and Roland, George Sand, Frederica Bremer, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, • Frances Wright, and George Eliot have pictured alike the wrongs of woman in poetry and prose. Though divided by vast mountain ranges, boundless oceans and plains, yet the psalms of our lives have been in the same strain, too long, alas ! in the minor key ; for hopes deferred have made the bravest hearts sometimes despairing. But the Same great over-soul has been our hope and inspiration. The steps of progress already achieved in many countries should encourage us to tune our harps anew to songs of victory. It is with great satisfaction we also welcome here to-day representatives of our own country-women from thirty-one different associations of moral and philanthropic reforms. y 34 International Council of Women. Although all these are the natural outgrowths of the demands made and the basic principles laid down by those who first claimed equal, civil, and political rights for women, yet this is the first time we have met on the same platform, to advocate the same measures in carrying on the varied reforms in which we are mutually interested. I think most of us have come to feel that a voice in the laws is indispensable to achieve success; that these great moral struggles for higher education, temperance, peace, the rights of labor, re- ligious freedom, international arbitration, are all questions to be finally adjusted by the action of government, and without a direct voice in legisla- tion, woman's influence will be eventually lost. Experience has fully proved, that sympathy as a civil agent is vague and powerless until caught and chained in logical propositions and coined into law. When every prayer and tear represents a ballot, the mothers of the race will no longer weep in vain over the miseries of their children. The active interest women are taking in all the great questions of the day is in strong contrast with the apathy and indifference in which we found them half a cen- tury ago, and the contrast in their condition between now and then is equally marked. Those who inaugurated the movement for woman's enfran- chisement, who for long years endured the merciless storm of ridicule and persecution, mourned over by friends, ostracized in social life, scandalized by enemies, denounced by the pulpit, scarified and caricatured by the press, may well congratulate themselves on the marked change in public sentiment that this magnificent gathering of educated women from both hemispheres so triumphantly illustrates. Now even married women enjoy, in a measure, their rights of person and property. They can make contracts, sue and be sued, testify in courts of justice, and with honor dissolve the marriage relation when it becomes intol- erable. Now most of the colleges are open to girls, and they are rapidly taking their places in all the profitable industries, and in many of the offices under Government. They are in the professions, too, as lawyers, doctors, editors, professors in colleges, and ministers in the pulpits. Their political status is so far advanced that they enjoy all the rights of citizens in two Territories, municipal suffrage in one State, and school suffrage in half the States of the Union. Here is a good record of the work achieved in the past half-century; but we do not intend to rest our case until all our rights are secured, and, noting the steps of progress in other countries, on which their various representatives are here to report, we behold with satisfaction everywhere a general uprising of women, demanding higher education and an equal place in the industries of the world. Our gathering here to-day is highly significant, in its promises of future combined action. When, in the history of the world, was there ever before such an assemblage of able, educated women, celebrated in so many varied walks of life, and feeling their right and ability to discuss the vital questions of social life, religion, and Formal Opening of the Council. 35 government? When we think of the vantage-ground woman holds to-day, in spite of all the artificial obstacles she has surmounted, we are filled with wonder as to what the future mother of the race will be when free to seek her complete development. Thus far women have been the mere echoes of men. Our laws and con- stitutions, our creeds and codes, and the customs of social life are all of mas- culine origin. The true woman is as yet a dream of the future. A just gov- ernment, a humane religion, a pure social life await her coming. Then, and not till then, will the golden age of peace and prosperity be ours. This gathering is significant, too, in being held in the greatest republic on which the sun ever shone—a nation superior to every other on the globe in all that goes to make up a free and mighty people—boundless territory, magnificent scenery, mighty forests, lakes and rivers, and inexhaustible wealth in agri- culture, manufactures, and mines—a country where the children of the masses in our public schools have all the appliances of a complete education— books, charts, maps, every advantage, not only in the rudimental but in many of the higher branches, alike free at their disposal. In the Old World the palace on the hill is the home of nobility; here it is the public school or university for the people, where the rich and the poor, side by side, take the prizes for good manners and scholarship. Thus the value of real character above all artificial distinctions—the great lesson of democracy—is early learned by our children, This is the country, too, where every man has a right to self-government, to exercise his individual conscience and judgment on all matters of public interest. Here we have no entangling alliances in church and state, no tithes to be paid, no livings to be sold, no bartering for places by digni- taries among those who officiate at the altar, no religious test for those elected to take part in government. - - Here, under the very shadow of the Capitol of this great nation, whose dome is crowned with the Goddess of Liberty, the women from many lands have assembled at last to claim their rightful place, as equal factors, in the great movements of the nineteenth century, so we bid our distinguished guests welcome, thrice welcome, to our triumphant democracy. I hope they will be able to stay long enough to take a bird’s-eye view of our vast posses- sions, to see what can be done in a moral as well as material point of view in a government of the people. In the Old World they have governments and people ; here we have a government of the people, by the people, for the people—that is, we soon shall have when that important half, called women, are enfranchised, and the laboring masses know how to use the power they possess. And you will see here, for the first time in the history of nations, a church without a pope, a state without a king, and a family without a divinely ordained head, for our laws are rapidly making fathers and mothers equal in the marriage relation. We call your attention, dear friends, to these 36 International Council of Women. patent facts, not in a spirit of boasting, but that you may look critically into the working of our republican institutions; that when you return to the Old World you may help your fathers to solve many of the tangled problems to which as yet they have found no answer. You can tell the Czar of Russia and the Tories of England that self-government and “home rule '' are safe and possible, proved so by a nation of upward of 60, ooo, ooo of people. Since the inauguration of our movement most of our noble coadjutors, men and women, have passed to the unknown land–Garrison, Phillips, Channing, Rogers, Burleigh, Edward M. Davis, Lucretia Mott, Martha C. Wright, Josephine Griffing, Clarina Nichols, Frances Gage, Paulina Davis, Abby Foster, Lydia Maria Child, and Richard Mott, and many others, together far outnumbering those who still remain to watch and wait. The vacant places on every side warn us in the sunset of life that we, too, are passing away, and that younger hands must soon take up our work. To achieve equality for woman in every position in life, and fit her to maintain that position with wisdom and dignity, is a work worthy to unite all our energies and attune our hearts in harmony. Those who, like the children of Israel, have been wandering in the wilderness of prejudice and ridicule for forty years must feel a peculiar tenderness for the young women on whose shoulders we are about to leave our burdens. Although we have opened a pathway to the promised land, and cleared up much of the underbrush of false sentiment, logic and rhetoric, intertwisted and intertwined with law and custom, blocking all avenues in starting, yet there are still many obsta- cles to be encountered before the rough journey is ended. I think, how- ever, you will find in the bound volumes of “The Revolution’’ and “Woman’s Journal,” and the three huge volumes of the “History of Woman Suffrage,” all the necessary arguments to silence any reasonable opponent. If these fail we shall hope much from the youngest-born of all our papers, “The Woman's Tribune.” If it finds that arguments fail, with the daring of youth it may use some more powerful ammunition to drive all opposing forces from the field of battle, and overthrow forever an aristocracy based on sex. The yOunger women are starting with greater advantages over us. They have the results of our experience ; they have had superior opportunities for educa- tion, and will have a more enlightened public sentiment for discussion, and more courage to take the rights that belong to them ; hence we may look to them for speedy conquests. In calling this Council we anticipated many desirable results. Aside from the pleasure of mutual acquaintance in meeting face to face so many of our own country-women, as well as those from foreign lands, we hoped to Secure thorough national and international organizations in all those reforms in which we are mutually interested. To come together for a week and part, with the same fragmentary societies and clubs, would be the defeat of one- half the purpose of our gathering. Formal Opening of the Council. 37 Above all things that women need to-day in their reform work is thorough organization, and to this end we must cultivate some es/rif de com/s of Sex, a generous trust in each other. A difference of opinion on one question must not prevent us from working unitedly in those on which we agree. Above all things, let us hold our theological speculations of a future life in abeyance to the practical work of the present existence, recognizing all sects alike and all religions—Jew and Gentile, Catholic and Protestant—to be held equally sacred in their honest opinions. We sincerely hope that the proceedings of this Council as a whole will be as successful and satisfactory as our conventions in Washington invariably have been, and that marked courtesy in public and private will be generously extended to all our guests. We trust this interchange of sentiments and opinions may be a fresh inspira- tion to us all in our future work, and that this Convention may be long remembered as among the most pleasant and profitable days of our lives. As the character of this Convention must depend in a large measure on what those who call it may do and say, it would be well for us to keep in mind the responsibility that rests on each and all. If it be true that we can judge of the civilization of a nation by the status of its women, we may do much during this Convention to elevate our institutions in the estimation of the world. Our form of government is being studied by leading statesmen in the Old World, as never before; alike in the Chamber of Deputies and the House of Commons the powers of our executive, legislative, and judicial departments have been freely discussed and recommended as worthy of adoption. Mr. Gladstone says: “The American Constitution is, as far as I can see, the most wonderful work ever struck off by the brain and purpose of man.” < * * Lord Salisbury says: “The Americans have a Senate. I wish we could institute it here. Marvelous in its strength and efficiency. * * * Their Supreme Court gives a stability to their institutions which, under the vague and mysterious promises here, we look for in vain.” Such writers and his- torians as Sir Henry Maine, Mackenzie, Froude, and Matthew Arnold have commented on our democratic institutions in most complimentary terms. Indeed, the whole tone of English writers and travelers has entirely changed since they amused the world with ridicule of our people fifty years ago. It is the dignity of the Republic, as viewed to-day, we are here to represent. Closer bonds of friendship between the women of different nations may help to strengthen the idea of international arbitration in the settlement of all differences, that thus the whole military system, now draining the very life- blood and wealth of the people in the Old World, may be completely over- turned, and war, with its crimes and miseries, ended forever. The question is continually asked, If women had the right of Suffrage how would they vote on national questions? I think I might venture to say that the women on this platform would all be opposed to war. As to the much- 38 International Council of Women. vexed question of the fisheries we would say, in view of our vast Atlantic and Pacific coast, thousands of miles in extent, do let Canada have three miles of the ocean if she wants it. If the cod is the bone of contention, as it is the poorest of all fish, let the Canadians eat it in peace so long as we have oysters, shad, bass and the delicate salmon from our Western lakes and California. Upon other questions now up for consideration we should probably be of one mind. As to a treaty with Russia to send back her political prisoners to be tortured in her prisons and the mines of Siberia, our verdict would be no, no. America must ever be the great university in which the lovers of freedom may safely graduate with the highest honors, and under our flag find peace and protection. The able statement by Stepniak, the Russian ni- hilist, laid before our Senate, should be carefully read by all of us, that our influence may be used intelligently against all treaties, com- promising, as they would, the honor of a nation upholding the right of free speech and free press in the criticism of their rulers by the people. As to international copyright, we should no doubt say let us have a law to that effect by all means, because it is fair and honest. Moreover, since we now have our own historians, philosophers, Scientists, poets, and novel- ists, and England steals as much from us as we do from her, it is evident that sound policy and common honesty lie in the same direction. As to the overflowing Treasury that troubles the conscience of our good President, our wisest women would undoubtedly say, pay the national debt and lighten the taxes on the shoulders of the laboring masses. As to the amendments of the Constitution now asked for by Some reformers, and a body of the clergy, to recognize the Christian theology in the Constitution and introduce religious tests into political parties and platforms in direct violation of Article VI, clause 3, of the National Constitution, I think the majority in our woman suffrage associations would be opposed to all such amendments, as they would destroy the secular nature of our Government, so carefully guarded by our fathers in laying the foundation of the Republic. This freedom from all ecclesias- tical entanglements is one of the chief glories of our Government and one of the chief elements of its success. We can not too carefully guard against all attempts at a retrogressive policy in this direction. If there is one lesson more plainly written than another on the institutions of the Old World it is the danger of a union of church and state, of civil and canon law, of theo- logical speculations in the practical affairs of government. If the majority of women on the suffrage platform would vote thus wisely on five questions, they may show equal wisdom on others that may come up for future legisla- tion. On questions of land, labor, prohibition, and protection there would, no doubt, amongst us, be many differences of opinion, but I think we should all agree that that system of political economy that secures the greatest bless- ings to the greatest number must be the true one, and those laws which guard most sacredly the interests of the many rather than the few, we should Formal Opening of the Council. 39 vote for. When woman’s voice is heard in Government our legislation will become more humane, and judgments in our courts be tempered with mercy. Surely the mothers who rocked the cradle of this Republic may be safely trusted to sustain their sires and sons in all their best efforts to establish in the New World a government in which the sound principles of our Constitution and Declaration of Independence may be fully realized, in which there shall be no privileged classes, but equal rights for all. Under a government and religion recognizing in rational beings the rights of conscience and judgment in matters pertaining to their own interests, above all authority of church and state, it needs no argument to prove the sacredness of individual rights, the dignity of individual responsibilities. The solitude of every human soul, alike in our moments of exaltation and humiliation, in our highest joys and deepest sorrows, into which no other one can ever fully enter, proves our birthright to Supreme self-sovereignty. As in all the great emergencies of life, we must stand alone, and for final judgment rely upon ourselves, we can not overestimate the necessity for that liberty by which we attain our highest development and that knowledge that fits us for self-reliance and self-protection. Miss Anthony then presented letters and telegrams Of greeting : I hold in my hand a letter from Mrs. Priscilla Bright McLaren, of Edin- burgh, the oldest sister of John and Jacob Bright, a woman with a spirit as beautiful and a culture as noble as her brothers’. NEWINGTON Hous E, EDINBURGH, March 8, 1888. My Dear and Honored Friend, Susan B. Anthony: It would have been a great privilege to have been able to accept your gratifying invitation to be present at your Congress. My pen is too weak to express all I feel of sympathy with you, in the idea which stimulated you to inaugurate this grand expression of the progress which has been made towards the emancipation of women from the fetters which law and custom have woven around them the world over. It would have been a beautiful closing to a long life, fraught with much blessing, to have become personally acquainted with the large-hearted and gifted women, not only of your own country, but from other lands, who will gather round you on this great occasion. But it is no small pleasure to be one among the many thousands who will be represented there from our nation, by the deputation which has been appointed to go in their names. There are two noble women in Edinburgh whom we would have liked to have sent to your Council—Elizabeth Pease Nichol and Eliza Wigham. They worked in your anti-slavery struggle at a time when even Wilberforce shrank from the idea of women taking an equal part with men in that holy work, lest it might lead them to seek for their own emancipation. I mention this to show what time and effort have accomplished for women. When the prophetic spirit of so good a man as Wilberforce dared hardly face such an unfolding of the principle of freedom, we can understand how it was that Christ, in a much darker day, said to his disciples: “I have many things to say unto you, but you can not bear them now.” We send to your Congress women amongst the most eloquent and gifted of our 40 International Council of Women. workers. Mrs. Alice Scatcherd and Mrs. Ashton Dilke represent the latest and greatest of our political associations, the outcome of our Women's Suffrage Socie- ties, associations which possess the virtues and additional strength which youth and growing intelligence give to the offspring of an honored parentage. Newcastle- upon-Tyne sends Mrs. Ashton Dilke to represent their Women's Liberal League. She has the double honor of accompanying your venerable and venerated President, Mrs. Cady Stanton, in her voyage home from this country, who seems to us, as she crosses from our land to yours, to be a holy link joining the two nations together. Mrs. Scatcherd's work and ability are best attested by the many credentials she brings over as the representative of the Women’s Liberal Leagues, not only for her own great county of York, but for Darlington in the county of Durham, Southport in Lancashire, and Crewe in Cheshire. She also represents the women in her native town of Leeds on the great and burning question of social purity. There is no ques- tion from the lowest condition to which woman can fall to the highest to which she can aspire educationally which has not had the benefit of her earnest voice and the assistance of her wonderful power for practical work. Mrs. Stewart, full of years and noble work in the great moral question of this age, of which Mrs. Josephine Butler is the leading spirit, is sent by the Bristol committee of the Ladies’ National Society for the Prevention of State Regulation of Vice, thus manifesting her earnestness in the cause to which she has devoted the best years of her life. Mrs. Stewart crosses the ocean when she might well have claimed the rest which her age demands. * And now I come to Mrs. Ormiston Chant. We in Scotland have not inaugu- rated Women’s Liberal Leagues as they have done in England ; one reason being that there is less need for them, as the Conservatives do not possess much political strength in Scotland. Mrs. Chant, therefore, represents our Edinburgh and Glas- gow National Women's Suffrage Society pure and simple, which is a strong and united body. She is also sent as the representative of the Social Purity, Peace and Vigilance Associations here, and also of the British Women's Temperance Associa- tions both in Scotland and England. I believe in inspirations. The other day I was led to look into a little volume of poetry called “Verona and Other Poems,” written by this gifted lady, to find four lines which had much impressed me a year ago, when her book was first published. I had quite forgotten what the verse was, but was sure I should recognize it when I came upon it. I was not a little struck to find it was a part of a poem entitled, “England to America.” It seemed to me as though the little poem had been writ- ten almost prophetically when regarded in connection with our having appointed the author as our delegate to your Congress. I got it printed in the form in which I send it to you, with the dove bearing the olive branch, which comes as the emblem of our feeling toward you. I thought it might serve as a little souvenir of your great Congress, and Mrs. Chant will be the bearer of her own beautiful message to you. Before closing let me tell you another little story of love and good-will. Mrs. Marie Müller, the mother of Henrietta Müller and of Eva McLaren, and of two other daughters devoted to good work, in proof of her full appreciation of the far- reaching meaning of your Convention, sent me £30 in aid of it, with these eloquent words, “For God and my Country.” And it is in the full meaning of these words and with this great sentiment in our hearts that we send forth our representatives to your Congress. When I think of all the questions and all the hopes and aspirations * Mrs. Stewart failed to attend the Council. Formal Opening of the Council. 41 which they go to represent, I feel that I may quote with a slight alteration the words of one of our poets, and say : They bear a freight, If prayerful thought and mind were weight, For Him Who bore the World.” That they may contribute something of good from us to you and bring back much from you to us, is the blessing which I hope an approving God will give to their mission. I am, dear Miss Anthony, apologizing for my long letter, your loving friend, - PRISCILLA BRIGHT MCLAREN. Miss ANTHONy. I hold in my hand letters from Elizabeth Pease Nichol, Eliza Wigham, Edinburgh; Mrs. Jacob Bright, Alderly Edge ; Catharine Lucas Thomasson, Bolton ; Margaret E. Parker, Penketh ; Margaret Bright Lucas, Caroline A. Biggs, Frances Lord, F. Henrietta Müller, London ; Isabella M. Tod, Belfast ; Caroline de Barrau, Theodore Stanton, Charlotte B. Wilbour, Paris; Eugenie Potonié Piérre, Vincennes, France. Mlle. Hubertine Auclert, editor of Za Citoyenne, Paris, in a letter outlining her idea of establishing parliaments of women, writes: - When one wishes to assert one's claim, one must, after all, have the courage to proclaim it. * * * To gain our rights we do no violence to the body; but we do violence to the minds in which bitter prejudice is anchored. *, * * When we shall have under our eyes assemblies of women discussing wisely, working a great deal and well, we shall no longer be prevented from sending women into the parliaments of men. * * * The Congress at Washington, in which so much intelligence and nobility will be united, will complete, perfect and launch this idea of which I have given but an outline. * * * The United States of America will establish the united rights of the human race by causing to triumph, for the two sexes, equality before the law. Miss ANTHONY. I would mention a few of the women whose names are appended to this greeting from Bristol, England. There are three sisters-in- law of John and Jacob Bright, Anna Priestman, Mary Priestman, and Mar- garet A. Tanner, as noble women as the earth ever saw. There is Helen Bright Clark, the daughter of John Bright. As some of you may know, Mr. Bright, in his later years, has declared himself not in favor of the enfran- chisement of women, and four years ago, when I was in England, I had the pleasure of attending a Liberal Conference, at Leeds, in which he made a great speech. In the business Session of this conference this brave daughter of John Bright, having been appointed by some of the Liberal Leagues of the kingdom a delegate to that body, rose to her feet and seconded a motion that the Liberal Party of England should put in its platform a woman-suffrage plank, knowing well that it was in direct opposition to her father. That is why I call her brave. As much as the woman loved her father, she loved truth and her own convictions more. The Bright family I delighted to call Americans when over in England, because they so thoroughly understood the 4 42 International Council of Women. principles of freedom and equality that underlie our Government. The Women's Liberal Association, of Bristol, sends us the following greeting: - - BRISToI., ENGLAND, March 1, 1888. To the International Council of Women assembled by the National Woman Suffrage Association of the United States at Washington, from the Committee of the Bristol Women's Liberal Association. DEAR SISTERs: We have heard of your intended gathering with deep interest. We are not able to send one of our number to represent us, but we write to tell you that your zealous labors in America strengthen and encourage our work here, to bid you God-speed, and to assure you that we are one with you in the conviction that women must stand by women, the most educated by the most ignorant, the most sheltered by the most unprotected, until every barrier raised by law and custom in the Way of woman's full development and freedom shall be broken down. (Signed on behalf of the Association.) ANNA. M. PRIESTMAN, HELENA BORN, President. Rosa LIE BRUCE, HELEN. P. BRIGHT CLARK, MARIA CoI,BY, MARGARET A. TANNER, MARY A. ESTLIN, EMMA VENAING, LouTSA PERRY, SARAH MARY JEWETT, REBECCA NEWELL PRICE, ANNIE THOMAs, - MARY RALPH, Vice-Presidents. CATHERINE STONE, MARY PRIESTMAN, EMILY STURGE, Treasurer. HELEN. M. STURGE, ALICE GRENFELL, LOUISE BJN-ARM, SARAH JANE TANNER, Evecutive Committee. Honorable Secretaries. Miss ANTHON.Y. And here is a greeting from Ireland with most honored names of the city of Dublin : To the International Council of Women to be held in Washington, March, 1888. We, who subscribe our names, on behalf of very many friends in Ireland, desire to express our deep regret that we shall not be able to assist in your eventful anni- versary celebration. We shall, however, be with you earnestly in spirit. In com- mon with yourselves, Irishwomen still suffer grievously from numerous political and other disabilities, but we are thankful to report that we have made several most important advances, chiefly in the direction of educational justice, during the last decade; and we have good reason to expect that many other reforms of a like substantial character will be effected during the next few years. That your delib- erations may be blessed in the rapid hastening of those further measures of justice for which women everywhere are longing, is the earnest prayer of our hearts. ANNA MARIA HASLAM, Hon. Sec. Women's Suffrage Association. MARY EDMUNDSON, Hon. Sec. Dublin Prison-Gate Mission. HANNAH MARIA WIGHAM, Pres. Women’s Temperance Association, Dublin, and Mem- ber of Peace Committee. WILHELMINA WEBB, Member of Ladies' Sanitary Committee, Women's Suffrage, etc. RoSE McDow ELL, Hon. Secretary Women’s Suffrage Committee. ISABELLA MULVANY, Head Mistress Alexandra School, Dublin. HARRIET W. RUSSELL, Member of Women's Temperance Association. Formal Opening of the Council. 43 DEBORAH WEBB, Late Hon. Sec. Ladies' Dublin C. D. A. Repeal Association. ELLEN ALLEN, Member of Women’s Temperance and Peace Associations. LUCY SMITHSON, Member of the Sanitary Committee and Women's Suffrage Associa- tion. EMILY WEBB, Member of Women’s Suffrage Association. AGNES MASON, Medical Student and Member of the Women's Suffrage Committee. Miss ANTHON.Y. And now comes Norway's greeting: The Women's Suffrage Association of Norway to the International Council of Women at Washington. The members of our Association express their deepest gratitude to the women of America who forty years ago took the lead in the woman suffrage movement. We feel the greatest admiration for the noble work you have done and are doing in our common cause, and we join in your hope for the future. On behalf of the Women’s Suffrage Association of Norway. GINA KROG, President. ANNA BOGSTAD, Vice-President. Miss ANTHON.Y. And re-enforcing this hearty good speed, there comes this morning a cable message saying, “Success to your work,” dated Chris- tiana, March 25, 1888, and signed Norwegian Women's Suffrage Associa- tion. And here is a cablegram from the youngest daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who, to my chagrin, married an Englishman and expatriated herself—Harriot Stanton Blatch, Basingstoke, who sends greetings and good wishes to the Council, and who expected to be here until the last moment. This telegram is from California, and says: We, the undersigned, physicians of San Francisco, send greetings and best wishes for a successful Council. CHARLOTTE. B. BROWN, M. D. AGNES LowRY, M. D. LUCy M. F. WANZER, M. D. EMMA. S. MERRITT, M. D. EDNA R. FIELD, M. D. ELIZABETH YATES, M. D. ISABELLA LOWRY, M. D. ELIZABETH GALLIMORE, M. D. ELIZABETH. C. SARGENT, M. D. Miss ANTHONy. I must tell you that Elizabeth Sargent is the daughter of the late Senator Sargent, Minister to Germany, who perfected her med- ical studies in the Old World, is now practicing in San Francisco, and has founded a hospital there for women. This is a telegram from the editor and founder of the AVew York Press, Robert P. Porter : Mrs. Porter and myself send greetings. Hope your Convention will be a success. The Press will publish a good report of your proceedings. - Miss ANTHONY. Very good. We are glad that newspaper editors are vieing with each other as to which shall publish the best report of our Council. It used to be otherwise, when they vied with each other to see which could say the least of fact and the most of caricature and ridicule. Thank Heaven, those days have passed. 44 International Council of Women. Miss Anthony then presented the foreign delegates. ALEXANDRA GRIPENBERG. I have the honor and the pleasure to represent my poor little nation that lives in the hard climate which we have in Fin- land, and I bring you a greeting from our pleasant blue lakes and our mid- night sun, and from our women who have sent me here to the land of the noble and eminent women of America. ISABELLE BOGELOT (speaking in her native tongue). I am here in the name of my compatriots of France to bear to you the message of her greet- ing and her thanks. Miss Anthony then presented the delegate from Norway, Sophia Magelsson Groth. PUNDITA RAMABAI SARASVATI. I am very glad, good friends, to meet you here, and I am sure if India knew what these wonderful women were doing she would be very glad to send her greeting; and as she has not sent her official delegates, I will try to represent her myself, especially as her women are not able to talk in your language. I am very glad to meet you, and wish you all success. MARGARET MOORE. When at the reception the other evening some friendly woman said to me: “I hope you will feel at home in this country,” I said: “Yes, every Irish woman who comes to America comes home.” And so far do I feel that, that although to-day I stand here as a representa- tive of Irish women, as you have been told, having received the highest honor in the power of the English government to bestow upon an Irish woman, that of imprisonment for the love of her country, I have declared my intention of becoming an American citizen and bringing up my children here in the land of liberty. We Irish women have already taken our place in the political van. When our brothers were imprisoned we stepped for- ward and carried on the work. Even in the ages long ago there was an Irish queen who died fighting at the head of her army, which proves that in those days there was perfect equality and that women were able to do their share of fighting then, as well as of talking. I am proud to be here with this assemblage of the daughters of various parts of the earth, all strangers, perhaps, in blood, but all the children of one common Father, and all striving how best they can do that Father's will. In presenting the English delegates, Miss Anthony said: Mrs. McLaren in her letter of greeting to this Council introduces and, as I might say, lays her sacred hand upon the heads of the delegates who have been appointed from Edinburgh. They are Mrs. Ormiston Chant and Mrs. Scatcherd. Then, besides these two delegates, we have Mrs. Margaret Dilke— I have taught her better since she has come to this country than to be Mrs. James or John—Mrs. Margaret Dilke is our other delegate from England, Formal Opening of the Council. 45 appointed by the Liberal league of Newcastle. I will introduce to you first Mrs. Alice Scatcherd, who was a member of that liberal Conference at Leeds, of which I have already spoken. Mrs. SCATCHERD. I can not express to you how deeply touched I have been by the cordiality of the welcome with which the pame of my country and its delegates have been received by you. I regard the invitation to be present at this International Council as the greatest honor ever accorded to me. Indeed, it is the greatest honor which America could, in my opinion, render to an English woman. I am proud indeed to think that I was present at that reception in Liverpool, to which Mrs. Stanton referred, when the question of this great Council was first mentioned. We have come, hoping to learn much from the ladies of this country. I have long been convinced that whatever step American women take in advance brings the women of England a step farther. Some people pretend to be afraid of what American women will do ; I can only say : “Go on, ladies,” because when you go far in advance we shortly follow. We have come to learn. We have also come to impart our views to you. I feel very sure that one permanent result of this great Council will be to draw the hearts of all women more closely together. I can only thank you from the bottom of my heart for the kind things you have said of my country and of me, and if I might mention one person it would be Mrs. Priscilla Bright McLaren, to whom Miss Anthony has referred. The women of Great Britain owe as much to the women of the Bright family as the men of Great Britain owe to the men of the Bright family. And the women owe a noble debt of gratitude to Jacob Bright, who for so many years has been the champion of woman's enfranchisement in the House of Com- mons. Mrs. McLaren is with us this very moment in spirit. She sits at home with her gray hair and her widowed head bowed down, but she is with us this whole week in spirit. When I go back to the hotel I shall send her a cable to tell her of the magnificent meeting of yesterday, and of the hearty reception accorded her name and ours to-day. Mrs. CHANT. It is indeed a day to be remembered, a day that gives one such glad hope for all that is coming in the future. Though we have heard some things that remind us that the fetters are still around some of us, I think those who say it have climbed the mountain of hope. We will not waste time in looking at the past. We see the mountain yonder, and those who have climbed have promised us that we shall climb too. It is a high honor to me to stand before you to represent the old country, for, though our mother is old and in some things very feeble, she has had a brave heart through the centuries, and we think if she can produce so splendid a child she must be worthy. Mrs. DILKE.. I also thank you most sincerely for the splendid reception and all the kind things that have been said about us in this country from the very 46 International Council of Women. moment we set foot here. I, who am a member of the Women's Suffrage So- ciety in London, and represent more especially the Women's Liberal Associa- tions of England, and in particular of my native town of Newcastle, am ex- tremely glad to have had the opportunity of joining hands with you on this great occasion. I got my first inspiration on woman suffrage from my friend, Mrs. Fawcett, and for years now I have done my utmost not only for women, but to join the hands of the great democracies, whom I believe will do the utmost for women as well as men. And it is the sympathy of the democracy of England that I wish more especially to bring to this great country of America. * Mrs. GUSTAFSON. I had prepared in my mind very much such a speech as the opening of Mrs. Dilke's, and as I do not exactly want to repeat it, perhaps you will permit me somewhat facetiously to contradict it and say: When we first set foot on this shore not a living being whom any of us had ever seen was there to greet us, owing to your blizzard. On account of that, no one knew our steamer had come in. I am very proud and grate- ful to bring greeting to this country from the National Prohibition Society of Great Britain, which strives first and foremost for woman suffrage as its sole hope of success in that or any other social reform whatever. I wish to express also my gratitude for the cordial hospitality extended to us every step from our first unrecognized landing until this very moment. Miss ANTHONy. We are just in receipt of a greeting from the Fatherland, from Germany. It is sent through Dr. Zakrzewska, of Boston ; it is from Johanna Frederica Wecker, of Frankfort. We are just as glad for this greet- ing from Germany as we are for all the others. Now we will take a little part of England, and of America, and call on Canada. Let me introduce to you Mrs. Bessie Starr Keefer, the first woman who ever took the degree of B. A. in that country. Mrs. KEEFER. I do not know exactly what I represent this morning. I am not supposed to represent the Province or the Dominion, but from Mrs. Stanton's speech I presume I represent the codfish, and I want to say that the codfish of Canada wishes me to inform the American nation that it would just as soon be eaten this side the line as the other ; it does not make a bit of difference. I bring to you the warm greetings of the Women’s Christian Temperance Unions of Toronto, eleven in number. Opposite me here stands Mrs. Mary McDonnell, the President of our Union of Toronto, to whom we Canadian women largely owe the fact that our spinsters and widows have a vote in municipal affairs. Miss ANTHONy. I believe we have heard from the delegates and repre- sentatives from the different countries, and now I want to give you a little specimen of Yankeeism. I am proud to present to you Lucy Stone, and I am glad you give her a right royal reception. [Great applause and waving of handkerchiefs.] Formal Opening of the Council. 47 Mrs. STONE. This call to present myself is entirely unexpected. My place on the programme is among the pioneers. This greeting you give me is cordial and touches me very much. I only hope that when the Pioneers' Day comes I shall be ready to say what you may be pleased to hear. I am glad to be here and that you are all here, and that both sides of the ocean are agreed in one thing—in the demand for equal human rights. Miss ANTHONy. I wanted to tell you when I introduced Mrs. Stone how I became converted to woman suffrage. In those good old days when pioneers lived I took the New York Week/y 777/une. I did not go to that first Worcester convention and I was not at that first convention at Seneca Falls. Do not make any mistakes about my being a pioneer. I am quite a young person. But I did read the New York Zºričume, and I was converted by the report of the very first of those meetings. Among the speeches was one by Lucy Stone, whom I then had never seen, in which she said the married woman’s epitaph was the “relict ’’ of John Smith, or some other man, who had owned her. I then made up my mind that I would be the relict of no man. I will call now on one of our young Soldiers—we can not all of us be old. I want to bring before you a woman who has an army of a million at her back, Miss Frances E. Willard, a modest woman, who can talk very little, so I hope you will make great allowance for her. Miss WILLARD. I think Susan brought me out to make me own up that I got very much the same sort of training from Lucy Stone that she did ; but, like Susan, I am very juvenile; I am not a pioneer; I am just one of the new-comers that are learning from these older heads how to behave, and I remember when I was dreadfully afraid of Susan and of Lucy, too. But now I love and honor these women, and I can not put into words my sense of what it means to me to have the blessings of these women who have made it possible for more timid ones like myself to come along and take our places in the world's work. If they had not blazed the trees and pioneered the way we should not have dared to come. If there is one single drop of chivalric blood in woman's veins it ought to bring a tinge of pride to the face when Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Julia Ward Howe, and these grand women, our leaders and our foremothers, are here for us to greet; that they, who heard so much that was not pleasant, may hear an occasional pleasant word while they are alive. Miss ANTHONY. Will Mr. Douglass say a word or two P FREDERICK DOUGLASS. I had no expectation of being called upon at this hour to utter one word, and hence I am in the condition of the excellent lady who addressed you a moment ago, Mrs. Lucy Stone. I am looking forward to the day of the pioneers. Having had the pleasure and privilege of being pres- ent on that memorable occasion, I shall be very glad to say something when the time arrives, in respect to it. Now I can only say that I rejoice to see 48 International Council of Women. this day. I congratulate myself first and you next, and this audience next, and the friends of this movement, and I rejoice above all things to see Mrs. Stanton in this chair to-day. I rejoice and give her joy that after this storm, this tempestuous forty years of agitation, she lives to witness the spectacle that she sees to-day. Miss ANTHON.Y. Let me present to you Mrs. Julia Ward Howe. Mrs. Howe. I must say, like two or three who have preceded me, that I am entirely unprepared to open my lips here this morning. When you have derided Miss Anthony's youth, what will you say to my white hair? When you have approved of Miss Anthony’s celibacy, what will you say to my oppo- site record, because it was about the same time when she took that valorous determination that she would not be anybody's relict that I took my place by the side of a hero to try to keep pace with his noble walk. I have another ditto to say—not only that I am unprepared to speak, but that, also, like others who have spoken, I am the convert of Mrs. Lucy Stone. I remember very vividly the woman suffrage meeting held in Boston, and to which I went with a rebellious heart. I came out very docile, indeed, and have so continued ever since. Miss ANTHONY. I now introduce to you a lady who made her appear- ance at a Woman Suffrage Convention the same time I did—Matilda Joslyn Gage. Mrs. GAGE. Although, like Miss Anthony, I can not claim to be a pio- neer, not having been in attendance at that first convention of 1848, yet, if having a rebellious spirit against all the wrong and injustice that one sees is being a pioneer, I have been one from my earliest childhood. Miss ANTHONy. I see Miss Clara Barton in the audience. Will she not speak a word to us? CLARA BARTON. I lack words to express my thoughts. My heart is too full. I am so full of joy at this scene before me that I have no words to utter it. It is a tribute to these noble women that they much deserve. I fear I was not a pioneer; but my heart was there with them. I am glad and proud to say it. I have followed many other ways, and if I had not been so occu- pied I should have done more with them ; but I can only say, God bless them this day. Miss ANTHONy. I see Robert Purvis in the audience. Let us hear from the one man who was willing to wait without a vote for twenty years, if need be, that his wife and daughter might vote with him. Mr. PURVIS. I am very proud of the distinction of being here, undeserved, I think, however, in view of the very small claims I can make of having contributed to the popularity which this cause has attained. But I am very proud to be regarded as one of the pioneers in this great and glorious move- ment. Formal Opening of the Council. 49 Miss ANTHON.Y. Let me now present to you Mrs. Caroline E. Merrick, of New Orleans, who is unable to speak on account of her voice, she having been almost commanded not to leave her own sunny South, at this time. I hope we may hear from her later. The Chairman then read the list of the Associations repre- sented in the Council. 1. NATIONAL WOMAN'S CHRISTIAN TEMPERANCE UNION, Frances E. Willard, Clara Cleghorne Hoffman, Susan H. Barney. 2. WORLD'S WOMAN'S CHRISTIAN TEMPERANCE UNION, Hannah Whitall Smith. 3. To Ron To Wom AN's CHRISTIAN TEMPERANCE UNION, Mary McDonell, Bessie Starr Keefer. 4. EDINBURGH TEMPERANCE ASSOCIATION, Laura Ormiston Chant. 5. BRITISH WOMEN'S TEMPERANCE ASSOCIATION, Laura Ormiston Chant. 6. NATIONAL TEMPERANCE HOSPITAL AND MEDICAL COLLEGE ASSOCIATION, Dr. Mary Weeks Burnett. 7. WOMAN'S AUXILLARY CONFERENCE OF THE UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION, Isabel C. Barrows. 8. WESTERN WOMEN'S UNITARIAN CONFERENCE, Victoria Richardson. 9. WOMEN'S MINISTERIAL CONFERENCE, - Rev. Ada C. Bowles. 10. WOMAN'S FREE BAPTIST ASSOCIATION, Marilla M. Hills, M. M. Brewster. 11. CHRISTIAN WOMEN'S BOARD OF MISSIONS, Kate B. Moore, Cordie B. Knowles. 12. WOMAN'S CENTENARY ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSALIST CHURCH, M. M. Dean, Emily L. Sherwood. 13. LADIES OF THE GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC, Laura McNeir. 14. WOMAN'S RELIEF CORPS OF THE G. A. R., E. Florence Barker. 15. AMERICAN RED CROSS SOCIETY, Clara Barton. 16. FRENCH WOMAN'S UNION FOR THE CARE OF THE WOUNDED, Isabelle Bogelot. 17. WORK OF THE LIBERATED OF ST. LAZARE, Isabelle Bogelot. 18. WOMEN'S PRIMARY ASSOCIATION (UTAH), Nettie Y. Snell. 19. YoUNG LADIES' MUTUAL IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION (UTAH), Luella L. Young. 20. WOMEN'S RELIEF ASSOCIATION (UTAH), Emily S. Richards. 21. WOMAN'S NATIONAL INDIAN ASSOCIATION, Amelia S. Quinton. 22. AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION, Lucy Stone, Mary A. Livermore, Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell. SCHOOL SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION (MASSACHUSETTS), Martha A. Everett. 24. EDINBURGH NATIONAL SOCIETY FOR WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE, Alice Scatcherd, Laura Ormiston Chant. 25. GLASGOW WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION, Laura Ormiston Chant. 26. WOMAN SUFFRAGE SOCIETY (FRANCE), Isabelle Bogelot. 27. NORWEGIAN WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE SOCIETY, Sophia Magelsson Groth. 28. WESTERN ASSOCIATION OF COLLEGIATE ALUMNAE, Louisa Reed Stowell. 29. ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF WOMEN Julia Ward Howe, Mary F. Eastman. 23. 30. FINNISH WOMEN'S UNION, Alexandra Gripenberg. 50 International Council of Women. 31. DANISH WOMAN's ASSOCIATION, Ada M. Frederiksen. 32. WOMEN'S EDUCATIONAL AND INDUSTRIAL UNION (Boston), Abby Morton Diaz. 33. KNIGHTS OF TABOR, Leonora M. Barry. 34. THE GRANGE, Fraternal Delegate: Anna M. Worden. 35, 36, 37. DARLINGTON, YORKSHIRE, AND SOUTHPORT LIBERAL WOMEN's Associ ATIONS (ENGLAND), Alice Scatcher d. 38. NEWCASTLE WOMEN'S LIBERAL ASSOCIATION (ENGLAND), Mrs. Ashton Dilke. 39. MORAL EDUCATION SOCIETY (BOSTON), Caroline M. S. Frazar. 40. NEW YORK COMMITTEE FoR PREVENTION OF STATE REGULATION OF VICE, Anna Rice Powell. 41. EDINBURGH BRANCH OF THE FEDERATION FOR REPEAL OF STATE REGULATION OF VICE, Laura Ormiston Chant. 42. NATIONAL VIGILANCE ASSOCIATION (ENGLAND), Laura Ormiston Chant. 43. EDINBURGH PURITY AND VIGILANCE ASSOCIATION, Laura Ormiston Chant. 44. DANISH WOMEN'S UNION FOR THE PROTECTION of YOUNG GIRLs, Ada M. Frederiksen. 45. SOROSIS, M. Louise Thomas, Jennie C. Croly. 46. SOCIOLOGIC SOCIETY OF AMERICA, Lita Barney Sayles. 47. UNIVERSAL PEACE UNION, Rev. Amanda Deyo. 48. WOMEN’s PEACE AND INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION SoCIETY (ENGLAND), Laura Ormiston Chant. 49, PROHIBITION MOVEMENT OF GREAT BRITAIN, Zadel B. Gustafson. 50. WOMAN's NATIONAL PRESS ASSOCIATION. Aurelia Hadley Mohl. 51. WOMAN'S INTERNATIONAL PRESS ASSOCIATION, Martha R. Field. Miss ANTHONy. One of the great purposes of calling this Council has been that it may result in an International Association that shall henceforth hold itself in readiness to communicate with every possible organization in every possible country on the face of the globe, that we may know that all women who are struggling for freedom are shaking hands together the world over. To carry out this idea for the co-operation of the women of all nationalities, it was decided, at a meeting of the delegates held at the Riggs House, Saturday afternoon, to appoint a committee of fifteen, to take into consideration whether it was advisable to form a National and International Council. I was appointed as the person to name the committee to attend to that matter. I have done it to the best of my ability. It is hard work to select fifteen from a galaxy of fifty splendid women, but I hope you will approve my choice. They are: Frances E. Willard, Victoria M. Richard- son, Rev. Ada C. Bowles, M. Louise Thomas, Clara Barton, Rachel G. Foster, Mary F. Eastman, May Wright Sewall, Martha R. Field, Bessie Starr Keefer, Alice Scatcherd, Laura Ormiston Chant, Isabella Bogelot, Sophia Magelsson Groth, Alexandra Gripenberg. * The session closed with the singing of the stirring hymn, ‘‘ God Shall Lead US On.” MONDAY, MARCH 26, 1888. EVENING SESSION. E D U C A T I O N . After music by the orchestra, the Chairman introduced Rev. Annie H. Shaw, who opened the session with prayer. The leading paper of the session was presented by May Wright Sewall, Principal of the Girl’s Classical School, Indianapolis, Indiana. HIGHER EDUCATION FOR WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES. Mrs. SEWALL. Mr. Garfield said that a hollow log with President Hopkins, of Williams College, sitting on one end of it and himself sitting on the other, would constitute a university. The truth in such a remark is easily compre- hended by women, for by virtue of that truth many a woman became liberally educated before any college registered women among its matriculates. Our subject, however, does not concern itself with the liberal education which gifted girls have incidentally received through close companionship with learned, generous, and magnetic minds, or have surreptitiously gathered from the cast-away text-books of collegian brothers and the libraries of scholarly fathers. The subject restricts us to a consideration of the higher education, received through its legitimate avenues, the college and the university. Thus lim- ited, the theme naturally suggests a study of the facilities for advanced edu- cation offered to the women of this country by its institutions. It is no part of my purpose to condense into this half-hour the history of the efforts made by the women of the United States to obtain these facilities, but to recapitulate the gains of the last half-century; to ascertain the absolute and the relative condition of education among us; and to indicate the work which must be done before we can regard the position of education in our country with complacency. The gains can be measured only when we know what opportunities were enjoyed by women at the time when this study properly begins; and these opportunities may be inferred from the demands made by the advocates of education at that time. - The first public expression in England of the restiveness felt by women under the existing methods of education was made by Mary Wollstonecraft in 1789. In 1799 Hannah More’s “Strictures on Female Education’’ appeared; this was followed in 1809 by a stronger discussion of the same subject under a weaker title, viz., “ Coelebs in Search of a Wife,” by the same author. In the same year (1809) Sydney Smith also vindicated the claim of women to a more extensive education than that in vogue, and in 1819 Emma Willard wrote her “Plan of Female Education,” embodied it in a 52 International Council of Women. memorial to the legislature of the State of New York, and petitioned that body for the endowment of a female seminary, thus making the first appeal on record in this country for State aid in the higher education of women. Mary Wollstonecraft uncompromisingly demanded that society should provide for women opportunities for the highest education, but the tone of all other early advocates of this cause seems to the ears of this genera- tion moderate, timid, and apologetic. For example, Mrs. Willard begs the members of the New York legislature to dismiss from their minds the fear that she wishes them to take measures for the production of “college-bred females,” and she implies that the vision suggested by the phrase is as obnoxious to her mind as it possibly can be to theirs. Again, in speaking of the honors which are used to stimulate students in colleges, she expresses the opinion that the diploma which each receives at the end of the course is “admissible in a female seminary;” but that the appointments to perform certain parts in public exhibitions which are given in college by the faculty as rewards for superior scholarship can not with propriety be made in a seminary, since, as she naively adds, “public speaking forms no part of female education.” - Indeed it was not higher education in its present sense which pioneers in this cause advocated. It was not higher education at all, but education for which they pleaded, as was their need. It must be remembered that the college had been equipped for young men before the School-house was opened to their sisters. Harvard College was founded one hundred and fifty-three years before the slightest provision for the education of girls was made by Massachusetts. The Boston public schools, founded in 1644, were for boys only until 1789, when girls were admitted to the “reading and writing schools '' for a part of the year. Primary schools for both sexes were opened in 1818. In 1828 girls were admitted to all grades below the High School. The Girls' City Normal School was established in 1852. In 1855 this institution was changed to the Girls' High and Normal School. In 1872 it was divided into a Normal and a High School ; only ten years ago, in 1878, the Girls' Latin High School was opened. I have indicated the growth of public-school opportunities for girls in Boston, because that is the oldest most cultivated city of an old State which has always stood pre- eminent for liberal-mindedness. Turning from public to private effort, we find that the seminary at Bethlehem, Pa., opened as a day School in 1749, and as a boarding school in 1785, is generally supposed to be the earliest of its kind in the United States, as it was for many years the best. The Friends' school at Wilmington, Del., still in operation, was opened in 1748, one year prior to the Bethlehem school. It is not known that girls were admitted at its opening, but the Quaker theory of the equality of the sexes, the present practice of the school, and the fact that its history mentions no B'ducation. 53 change of policy in this respect perhaps justify the conjecture that the school was co-educational in the beginning. The oldest institutions authorized to confer degrees upon women are Bradford Academy, Massachusetts, chartered in 1804, Maine Wesleyan Sem- inary and Female College, and Troy Female Seminary, chartered in 1821, and the Granville Female College, Ohio, in 1834. Such are the feeble beginnings of what may be called the higher educa- tion movement. Its genesis and growth may be thus indicated : the Boarding School, the Female Seminary, the co-educational Academy, and the Female College. The higher education of present generations is being carried forward regularly through (1) Women's Colleges, (2) Co-educational Colleges and Universities, and irregularly through (1) Clubs, (2) Lectures, (3) Correspondence Societies, (4) University Examinations. The Female Seminary at its best, as at Troy, N. Y., was a noble institu- tion; but there was hardly more difference between the Female Seminary and the barrenness which preceded it than between the Woman's College and the Seminary. The transition from the Seminary to the veritable College was not easy. A student of the higher education of women in this country can draw upon ample sources of information. No subject in the last fifty years has been discussed with greater fullness. In its consideration of the claims made by advanced women the public has exhibited no credulity. Every step has been challenged. The literature of this subject is vast, including biographies of individuals, histories of institutions, reports of formal inves- tigating committees, and the voluntary testimony of pulpit, lecture-room, and press. Clergymen of all grades, from curates and itinerant exhorters to Bishops and Moderators of the General Assembly, physicians of all schools, country schoolmasters and college presidents, journalists, Scientists, and moralists have discussed the religious, physiological, social, moral, and domestic aspects of this problem, while statisticians, with growing diligence and accuracy, have collected the facts. The objections against the claims of the higher education are all a priori, and fall naturally under three heads: (a.) Those that arise from the limitations of woman’s (supposed) nature. (b.) Those that proceed from the (supposed) direct effects upon men of such education of women. (c.) Those that arise from a consideration of the consequences to society which would flow from the higher education of women. Though supporters of all of the above objections still survive, they have been slain so frequently with logic, and have been buried so deeply under arguments and facts, that one may justly refer to them in the past tense. (a.) Objectors of the first class whose first interest, it must be admitted, seems to have been the happiness of women themselves, assumed the mental incapacity and the physical fragility of women. They urged that it was 54 International Council of Women. fruitless cruelty to encourage women to undertake an education which they could not achieve, inasmuch as their failure would make their mental limi- tations conspicuous, and thus add to their disappointment bitter mortifica- tion. These opponents added that should exceptional women demonstrate their possession of the mental scope and force required to do good college work, their feeble bodies would sink under severe application to abstruse subjects, and the result of such efforts would be (to quote the awful phrase of one who signed himself “A Worshiper of Womanhood) “hospitals and asylums filled with highly educated female wrecks.” Going further, these defenders of what was currently called “natural womanhood '' asserted that even should what they believed to be the exceptional prove to be the usual, and should it be demonstrated that women had capacity to acquire and strength to sustain the higher education, yet such acquirements would impair feminine grace, dull feminine sensibilities and destroy domestic tastes, thereby unfitting women for the conjugal and maternal relations in which Heaven had appointed that they should find their chief happiness. (5.) The second class of objectors declared, or implied with little attempt at disguise, that as woman was created for man, her education must be reg- ulated with reference to its effect upon him. These, accepting all the fine views of woman's nature entertained by the first class of objectors, argued that the tenderness, affection, and chivalrous regard with which women had inspired men had been the chief agencies in softening man’s rough nature ; that educated women would fail to inspire men with these sentiments; that the absence of such sentiments would seriously impair masculine character. They urged that woman's dependence upon man had hitherto been one of his chief incentives to activity; that the educated woman would be a self- sufficing not less than a self-sufficient creature, and that her independence of man would cause him to relapse into barbarism. Indeed the first institu- tion that asked authority to confer degrees upon women was refused on the avowed grounds that should women wear titles and degrees it would cheapen academic honors in the esteem of men and abate their intellectual enthusiasm. (c.) The third class of objectors considered neither the happiness of women nor the complacency of men as of primary importance, but saw in the higher education of women a menace to the State as well as to the family and soci- ety. These opponents of higher education were quick to discern its out- come ; indeed, they saw it when advocates denied it, and so the London Quarter/y, in an article upon the education of women, long ago said : But, whatever Mr. J. S. Mill may think, England is not prepared for either female suffrage or a female Parliament; for women as poor-law guardians, attendants at vestries, public lecturers, public speakers, doctors, lawyers, clergy, or even, to any much greater extent than at present, as authors. It will be seen that the three classes of objectors sustain one another, and that all of the objections cited rest upon the ultimate conviction that woman Education. 55 was destined to a subordinate rºle in the drama of life. The student finds all early systems of education resting upon this conviction, and upon its corollary, that boys must be trained to be useful and girls to be pleasing. The application of this theory reveals a flaw in it, since in the every-day world nothing pleases like usefulness, and nothing is so universally displeas- ing as incapacity. Those who pleaded the weakness of women as a reason for barring them out of colleges and universities were equally illogical, since education is the one substitute for physical strength accepted by the practi- cal world—is, indeed, the only possession which in that world can supple- ment weakness and enable it to compete with strength. The false philosophy which diminishingly continues to obstruct the efforts of women to secure for their sex equal opportunities for the higher education has its origin in an ignoble conception of the purpose of individual life quite regardless of sex. In the early history of education young men were no more encouraged to pursue college culture for the benefit it would be to themselves than young women now are. The New England colleges were in the first instance con- secrated to the training of clergymen and school-masters. There is, there- fore, no occasion for surprise that they did not receive women. So long as the college said: “I will make my alumni into clergymen and professors,” society naturally reasoned : “The college is no place for our daughters since they are to be neither pastors nor pedagogues.” When the college said: “My institution is as necessary for the lawyer and the physician as it is for the priest and the professor,” society was justified in the opinion that a cul- ture whose avowed object was to prepare its possessors for certain definite lines of professional service, was neither required by the members of a sex excluded from these lines of service, nor adapted to them. It is interesting to note that the Massachusetts legislature passed a law making women legally eligible to be employed as teachers in 1789, the year that dates the first demand for the higher education of women ; and one is not surprised to find that the first institutions offering improved facilities to women were dedicated to the almost sole purpose of producing missionaries and teachers. In harmony with this purpose Society demanded that women who aspired to the higher education should, like men, meet the test of utility. The pass-words of the practical world—“What can you do?” “What do you wish to do P’’ ‘‘How do you propose to use your education ?”—although they reveal a very low conception of the best results of culture and imply an utter ignorance of the highest reason for desiring it, have still been of inestimable advantage to women. There are yet parents, who in reply to the question, “Shall you send your daughters to college P '’ say, “Oh, no indeed. My daughters will never have to do anything for a living. We are quite able to support them,” sometimes adding: “ They will probably marry early ; we wish them to do so.” Utterances of this character imply that the higher education is valued primarily, perhaps solely, for the income 56 International Council of Women. it will yield. It was this valuation of it which led society in the early period of higher education to interpret the desire for it in women as a con- fession of poverty. It is possible that if the statistics were ascertainable they would show that a majority of the alumnae of the fourteen institutions admitted to the Association of Collegiate Alumnae began their college course with the idea of its possible pecuniary availability in mind. It is certain that few women have gone far in the higher education, whatever their opin- ions upon beginning its pursuit, without growing into the conviction that usefulness adds a grace to the most graceful woman. So the practical spirit with its fatiguing challenge, “What are you going to do?” has yielded the double advantage, that because of it enlarged activities have resulted from the higher education of women, and have also been an argument for bestowing it upon them. However, one of the surest measures of the growing favor enjoyed by the higher education in this country is the increasing number of young women registered annually in our colleges, with whom its availability as a means of support, if it enter at all as a motive into their college career, can do so to a very remote and inconsiderable degree. The a priori objections above cited, all based on the subordinate position of women, were met by a priori arguments based on the dignity and nobility of the human soul, but an incredulous world cared more for the replies to its doubts which were afforded by experience. The struggle between aspiring womanhood and sceptical society has been fruitful of experiments. Out of this struggle our present educational opportunities have grown. Dry as statistics generally are considered, they are of interest when they assume the form of an inven- tory of one’s own possessions. Therefore I shall make no apology for pre- senting a table which shows the condition of what the Bureau of Education calls “The Superior Education of Women’’ in the United States in the year 1886. The figures here presented would have seemed to Emma Willard and the ambitious young women whom she attracted to Troy precious as title deeds to the fairest estates of El Dorado, and as intangible as the Sun- tipped towers of vanishing air-castles. Colleges for women only . - - - - - - - - - 266 Co-educational colleges . - - - - - - - - - 207 Other higher institutions admitting women : Agricultural and mechanical - - - - - - - - - 17 Scientific . - - - - - - - - - - - - 3 Medical - - - - - - - - - - - - - 36 Total - - - - - - - - - - - - 529 In all of the above institutions women were registered as follows: In institutions for women only . - - - - - - - . 27,143 Women in co-educational institutions . - - - - - - 8,833 Total . - - - - - - - - - - - . 35,976 Education. 57 All of these young women of 1886 were undoubtedly pursuing what, in popular phrase, passes for higher education and were enjoying what, to the women of 1800 or even to those of 1848, would have seemed liberal advan- tages. But in trying to estimate justly our present educational conditions we must not be overcome by figures. We must repress the elation which may naturally follow the above results of “taking an inventory.” And yet the deductions demanded by fairness and the further abatements suggested by prudence being made, enough will remain to occasion gratitude and to justify hope. Any close application of high college standards would materially alter the above numbers. Only four of the 266 Women's Colleges and only eleven of the 207 co-educational Colleges and Universities are admitted to the Asso- ciation of Collegiate Alumnae (an organization whose standard is high). Though other institutions are doubtless as worthy as those already included in the Collegiate Alumnae Association, it is probably true that less than one- half of the 529 nominal colleges are doing real college work. Again, the degree to which the public recognizes woman's claim to the higher education is not indicated by a mere statement of the opportunities provided for the education of young women, but, side by side with these must be considered the opportunities provided by the same community for the higher education of its young men. In 1886 there were open to young men : Universities and Colleges - - . . - - - - - - 346 Schools of Science, . - - - - - - - - - - . 90 Schools of Theology, - - - - - - - - - - - 142 Schools of Law, . - - - - - - - - - - - . 49 Schools of Medicine, Dentistry, and Pharmacy, . - - - - - 175 TOTAL, - - ". - - - . 802 This total is to be compared with 529, the number of corresponding institutions for women. Students were registered in these institutions as follows: Colleges and Universities, . - - - - - - - - . 41,848 Schools of Science, - - - y - - - - - - - 10,532 Schools of Theology, . - - - - - - - - - - 6,344 Schools of Law, - - - - - - - - - - - 3,054 Schools of Medicine, etc., . - - - - - - - - 16,407 ToTAL, - - 78,185 . This total is to be compared with 35,976, the number of young women enrolled in similar institutions. As the education received by women at Normal Schools is that training which most closely corresponds with the professional training received in special schools which generally are open to men only, it may be fair to include Normal Schools in this computation, though it must be stated that the best Normal School gives no equivalent for a college and that the educa- tion received is inferior to that of the average school of medicine, law, or º 5 58 International Council of Women. theology. Normal schools are almost without exception co-educational, and there were in this country, in 1886 : Public Normal Schools, - - - - - - - - - - 117 Private Normal Schools, . - - - - - - - - - . 36 With students registered as follows: Women in Public Normals, - - - - - - - - - 22,185 Women in Private Normals, . - - - - - - . (about) 5,000 TOTAL, - - - - - - - - - - . (about) 27,185 Men in Public Normals, - - - - - - - - - . 9,616 Men in Private Normals, . - - - - - - - . (about) 3,000 ToTAL, - - - - - - - - - - . (about) 12,616 The returns from private normals are inexact. Comparing the above figures we find that there are 65+per cent. as many higher institutions open to women as to men ; that excluding normal students of both sexes from our computation there are 46–H percent. as many women as men in institutions for superior instruction, and including normal students of both sexes, there are 69-H per cent. as many young women as young men in such institutions. The relative number of institutions of learning open to both sexes, and the relative number of both in these institutions, are neither the sole nor the most reliable gauges of the relative interest felt by the public in their edu- cation. Communities and States, like individuals, express their opinions in their investments. The actual and relative investments in the means of higher education for the two sexes, in 1886, stood thus: Value of Grounds, Buildings and Apparatus of Colleges for Women, . $9,635,282 Productive Funds of Colleges for Women, . - - - - - 2,376,619 Income from Productive Funds, - - - - - - - . 136,801 Value of Grounds, Buildings and Apparatus of Colleges for Men, $62,356,638 Productive Funds of Colleges for Men, . - - - - - . 57,782,303 Income from Productive Funds, . - - - - - - - 3,271,991 The disparity between the properties belonging to their respective institu- tions is greater than that between the number of institutions belonging to both sexes, and much greater than the disproportion between the numbers of men and women who are registered as students in these institutions. I repeat the ratios existing between institutions and between numbers of stu- dents that the contrast between those ratios and the ratios of resources may be more evident. There are 63-- per cent, as many nominally higher institu- tions for women as for men; there are 46–H per cent. as many young women as young men receiving the nominally higher education ; but the value of the buildings, grounds, and apparatus for women's institutions is but 15–H per cent. of the values of the corresponding properties of men's institutions; the productive funds of women's institutions and the income from the pro- ductive funds of women’s colleges is but 4+ per cent. of the income yielded by the productive funds of the colleges and universities for men. In this Education. 59 connection is another significant fact. According to the report of the Edu- cational Bureau, there were in the year 1886 no State appropriations made for the support of the higher institutions of learning for women, while State appropriations amounting to $1,690,275 were in that year made for the higher institutions of learning for men. The following computations are not without interest, and will make the charge of partial statement impossible. Including co-educational colleges, the opportunities of women are 62 per cent. as valuable as those of men. They share the benefit of 51 per cent. as great productive funds, and 53 per cent, as large an income. Attention to the facts here presented should silence the declarations which one frequently hears to the effect that oppor- tunities for education are now as good and as abundant for women as for men. Such declarations are not true, and gratitude for the present oppor- tunities should not blind us to the inequalities which remain. The demand for the highest educational opportunities does not necessarily imply the demand for co-education, but the last tables given above show that in the United States these demands are practically identical. Thus, 266 women's colleges have property amounting to $9,635,282, while 207 co-educational colleges have corresponding properties to the amount of $29,61 I, I 44, and the 139 colleges to which men only are admitted, own corresponding properties to the amount of $32,745,474. Of the institutions which have assisted the higher education of women in this country, Troy Seminary (1821), Oberlin College (1833), Vassar Col- lege (1865), Michigan University (1870), Smith College and Wellesley College (1875), Harvard Annex (1879), and Bryn Mawr College (1885), merit special mention, since each marks an epoch in the history of a move- ment to which each made an essentially original contribution, and to whose course each gave a distinct impulse. Troy Seminary, as has been stated, made the first application for State aid. Mrs. Willard, in speaking of the rejection of her application for such assistance, wrote: “Could I have died a martyr in the cause (of female education) and thus have insured its success, I should have blessed the fagot and hugged the stake.” This is the spirit which has animated many a woman whose service has contributed to our opportunities. It is a spirit which should be remembered on this occasion with reverent gratitude. Oberlin College was the first exponent of co- education; Vassar was the first woman's college marking the differentiation from “Female College.” How novel its conception was is revealed in the correspondence of its founder. When the idea of this college was germinat- ing in the mind of Matthew Vassar, in 1858, he laid his plan before William Chambers, the distinguished publisher and philanthropist of Edinburgh, and solicited his advice. In his reply, after expressing his astonishment at Mr. Vassar’s plan, Mr. Chambers attempts to dissuade him from a design which, he assures him, will result in ignominious failure, and urges him to apply the 60 International Council of Women. money rather in founding a school for the blind, for the deaf and dumb, or for the feeble-minded. Michigan University was the first example of a strong, well-endowed, and numerously-attended institution opening its doors to women on equal terms with men, on the ground that any educational institution supported by the State belongs equally to all of the children of that State. Special commit- tees from many institutions in this country and from Europe and South America, have been sent to inspect the workings of the novel system at Ann Arbor, and its success has promoted the extension of co-education in the United States, in France and in England. Smith stood for three ideas new to colleges for women, viz: Greek as an entrance requirement; the entire absence of the preparatory department, which, as an attachment to most women's colleges, has so seriously impaired college work proper; and the cottage system of dormitories. Wellesley was the first Woman’s College to place itself under the exclusive administration of women ; the mere fact that the President of this strong, prosperous institution was a woman has heightened intellectual respect for women throughout our country. The Annex made the highest opportunities for instruction for the first time access- ible to women ; and, by making its entrance examinations identical with those of Harvard University, it has made a standard for secondary instruc- tion. Bryn Mawr, availing herself of all previous experiments, made a dis- tinct advance, and stands essentially for scholarship. Here is a Woman's College in whose curriculum, accomplishments, in the fashionable sense, have no part ; a Woman's College which affords no chaperonage and warrants no personal supervision of its students; one which offers young women collegiate and post-graduate training on the same severe terms of absolute personal free- dom and personal responsibility which the highest colleges for young men offer their students. This survey of existing advantages reveals our needs. Secondary instruc- tion must be improved. This will be effected by a higher standard of College admission. Colleges can make a common standard by rising to the highest now fixed, but they can do this only if their endowments are large enough to make them independent of tuition fees. Women, to aid higher education, must become the patrons of its institutions. Wisdom indicates that their bequests and gifts will be most beneficial if added to strong instead of weak foundations. Let them give to existing colleges instead of planting new ones. Let them give to the richest and ablest of existing colleges that admit women, and let them endow colleges for women in Universities like Harvard and Johns Hopkins so munificently that these stately institutions will desire the alliance. Let women endow scholarships and fellowships for women in the best institutions, that the ambition of young women may be stimulated and that there may be a new meeting ground where merit alone will fix one's position. These are lines of work whose development the limits of the pres- ent address do not allow. Education. 61 In considering this long struggle for educational opportunity, a struggle whose last field is yet far removed, one must not permit resentment to dis- tort the vision. There is in truth little occasion for resentment. So far as our own country is concerned, the work of reducing a new continent to cul- tivation and of supplanting barbarism with civilization, has been so vast that every person has been valued by his ability to aid in this work, and every education has been measured by the degree to which it would prepare its possessor for this work. Society has not so continually and consciously dis- criminated against women, as it has consciously and continually discriminated against culture as an end, and in favor of culture as a means to lower ends. In proportion as the conviction has grown that the higher education would assist men in doing the work of men outside of the chair, the bar and the pulpit, opportunities for their education have multiplied, and young men in increasing numbers have been compelled or encouraged to use these oppor- tunities. It is now admitted that the higher education is essential to the success of women who enter the fields of competitive intellectual service. The friends of higher education have now to prove that it is not only the need of every woman who looks to an industrial or professional career outside of her home, but, considering the ideal interests of humanity, that it is the peculiar need of young women whose tastes incline them to confine their activities to home and society and whose circumstances enable them to do so. Women stand- ing for the ideal, representing not what is, but what ought to be, should not fear to proclaim the doctrine that the higher education adds its own intrinsic value to that of the soul, and that this justifies the desire for it. Man's superiority over the highest of the lower animals rests partly in this, that he can adapt himself to any climate and sustain himself on the products of any soil. Man is thus self-adjusting by nature ; but the man whose natural capacity for self-adjustment has been re-enforced by discipline and culture is hardly less superior to the uneducated man than the uneducated civilized man is to ... the Savage or than the savage is to the brute. The education which adapts its possessor to one certain condition of society, and to one place and activity in that social state, renders him helpless whenever a social or indus- trial change occurs. The uneducated man who knows but one craft or occupation regards the inventor as his enemy and sees in each new dis- covery a competitor. Such a man finds himself stranded by progress, while his educated fellow-laborer can avail himself of the invention which, in rob- bing him of his old work, gives him a higher task. With as much natural tact and Self-adaptation as man, such is the paralyzing influence which a narrow education and the continual direction of her thoughts to the domestic functions has exerted upon her, that inability to adjust herself to new cir- cumstances is as marked a trait of the average woman of the upper classes, as it is of the average man in the lowest and narrowest handicraft. ~ 62 International Council of Women. This incapacity for self-adjustment is the cause of the most pitiable object and the origin of the saddest phrase in our language, viz., “The decayed gentlewoman.” This hapless creature is the result of a social custom which demands that young women, whose families are in comfortable circumstances, shall play with the half dozen years which intervene between school and marriage. This is the very class of young women from which college candi- dates should come. They have ability, means, leisure. It is the next duty of women who stand for high purposes to create a public opinion which shall encourage, nay, compel these young women to pursue the higher education. The principle of the division of labor finds novel application in modern life and especially in what, even in a democratic community, may be called the higher social circles. In such circles in the United States men are, by common consent, the guardians of material interests, while women, by the same authority, assume the direction of social (including spiritual) interests. Consider for an instant what interests are represented in this Council. Al- most every one of the eighty women on this programme represents a con- stituency, an organized constituency of women. Each of these constituencies numbers its members by scores, hundreds, thousands, some of them even by Scores and hundreds of thousands. These constituencies are organized to protect and promote moral issues which concern every class of every nationality; to carry forward reforms whose object is to free manhood from the thraldom of sensuality and to arouse womanhood out of its selfish indifference and inertia. In no work is the higher education, with all of the aspirations which it fosters and all of the latent power which it liberates, more constantly available than in solving the problems which arise in working with a part of humanity for the good of all of it. I am sure we are all conscious that women as a class are inadequately equipped for the service which humanity expects from them, which their hearts incline them to do. It must be admitted that all women of this time are self-made, for even the most highly educated women, even those educated by the regular agencies of college and university, have for the most part been permitted merely, not encouraged, and have a consciousness that they have directed their own development. It must be admitted that many conspicu- ously useful and noble women suffer from defects which are the results and the signs of self-making. They lack symmetry and a sense of proportion, and are thus betrayed into inaccuracies, exaggerations and partial views. Vanity impels the self-made to boast of their limitations as of high qualities, since they consider every limitation a proof of native power. Only enormous * and exceptional moral force will save such an one from becoming a charlatan and a demagogue. Philanthropists, humanitarians, and social reformers should be fed on the fruits of such knowledge as philosophy, science, economics, politics, history, and civil government. They need the discipline which comes from long drill in logic, mathematics, and the classics—the dis- Education. 63 cipline which will give a delight in accuracy, a sense of justice, moderation, and an ability to shift one's point of view. The division of labor between the sexes indicated above, and the magnitude of the problems which woman has volunteered to solve, demand proportional preparation. Some one objects that culture is selfish and is not the food upon which philanthropists thrive ; that culture is conservative and does not nourish reformers. To those objections this Council is sufficient reply. The object of culture is to grow into the image of God—the office of life is to do His work. In God is the correlation of divine forces, Love, Truth, Wisdom, Freedom. Too long women have regarded only one feature of the divine parent after whom they have sought to fashion themselves. Without Wisdom the works of Love can not be done. Culture is a force as irresistible as gravity; to the class in which it centers power and the signs of power will come. The next speaker was Pundita Ramabai Sarasvati, the cultured and beloved Hindoo, now endeavoring to secure in this country co-operation in the work of educating the child- widows of India. THE WOMEN OF INDIA. PUNDITA RAMABAI. My object in appearing before you to-night is to tell you something of the educational condition of the women in India. In olden times in our country the custom used to be that some few men and only a very few women were allowed to be educated. Those who were especially of the family of what we call the Brahmins, or priestly caste, a handful of them had obtained higher education, and were also standing at that time on the same footing as our great men. They used to hold discourse with men on equal terms, and it is said in Some of the Secret books of the Hindoos that once on a time there was a woman who wielded great power over the assembly of sages, and even held conversation with one of the greatest philosophers of that time. Afterwards it was thought best by our men to keep the women completely in ignorance, so that they might have more power over them. I do not blame them for that ; it was quite natural they wanted to have power over them, and, of course, our men were very intelli- gent and bright, as a rule, and these men had discovered the fact that if education was given to women it would be impossible for them to keep them under complete subjection. They wanted to make the women slaves of the husbands, and it was said by the government that a woman should never have any other god but her husband, and of course an educated woman would doubt the fact whether some men could be divine beings. Ignorant people, and even sometimes intelligent people, take anything on the teaching of their priests ; and the ignorant women of India are told by the priests that they have no place in heaven but through their husbands, and their salvation must be obtained through their husbands, and if they are 64 International Council of Women. in subjection to them and always do what the priests say they will be all right; there is no necessity of their having education. Moreover, it is thought that man is woman’s shield, as an umbrella that shields any person from Sun- shine or rain ; and also he is thought to defend woman from any evils that arise in the world. It is said by the priests that education will enable you to make a living, and if you go a little further in education it will make you a supreme being. But you need not make your living, the man will make your living for you, and if you are a good wife and think of your husband at the time of death, you will be born a man the next time you come to this world. So the time went on, and women were completely deprived of any kind of education, except now and then we had some princes and some learned men who wanted to have wives beside them who could read and write, especially some of our great princes. And so a great many women were allowed to have just education enough to make verses in praise of the men and praise them all the time; so the men got all the good they could. But the common women were not allowed, of course, to have any educa- , tion at all. There were some primary schools in our country, and before the little girls of eight or nine were betrothed they were allowed to go with the boys and have some little lessons, just in reading and writing. They seldom went further than learning the alphabet and to spell their own names and the family names; that was all. In these days we have primary schools all over India. Some are established by the missionaries, some by the English government, and some are supported by private families of intelligent men. I should not say families, but by intelligent men alone, and these schools give some little education to the women. I ought not to say women, but little girls eight or nine years of age—that is the School-going age, and after a girl is nine years of age she is taken from that school and betrothed to a boy of her own age, and that is the end of her education. In that time of two years she learns to read a little. She finds in her reading-book some stories of animals, about the dog that took a slice of bread and crossed a brook and saw his shadow in the brook and went after that shadow and lost what he had in his mouth, and so the moral is taught ; and there are some other stories like that, and also some history and some geography. But after a girl is betrothed she loses that opportunity for learning reading and writing, for our good mothers-in-law are very much opposed to education of women as a rule. These good moth- ers-in-law do not like the idea of their daughters having any education or advantage over them, and so, of course, they are not allowed to continue their education at all, and after their betrothal they have to forget whatever they have learned in these primary schools. - There are some high schools in our country; there is one in Calcutta, and there is one in Bombay, and there may be one middle-class school in Madras. Education. 65 - There is one high School at Poonah also. There are some schools a little higher than primary schools, called second-grade schools, to which girls go and learn six reading-books, which are appointed by the government. In these six standard books we have a few stories and a little something about the structure of the eye, and the liver, and something about the sun, and the English government coming into our country and kindly providing us with these beautiful things we have to-day, and also a record of the proc- lamation of 1858, in which year the Queen of England took the position of ruler of India, and in that proclamation all the rules are laid down how the country will be governed by the English, and how liberal they will be. All these are very good things to know. There is a little history—a history in a dialogue form. We Orientals are famous for these dialogues. One man asks a question and the teacher answers, and in that history we are told that India had no history of its own before the Europeans went to India. All the people were fighting each other, and there was no peace and no comfort ; there were highway robbers and tigers and snakes, and the women threw their babies into the Ganges, and a good many people threw themselves under the car of Juggernaut, and these English people brought peace to us; these people were all very bad, but since the English government went there they have begun to reform a little, and the English have treated us very kindly and honestly, and all that is desired now is to be faithful to the English government, and to be good and to try to be honest. These are the things that are taught in this history, and also we are taught in a dialogue form how many kings there were and how many battles were fought and how many wives the kings had, etc. - But there is a little brighter side. In 1878 the doors of the universities of India were thrown open to women. The government was so kind as to Say that women might come and pass examinations with men, if they chose to do so, but of course that choice was not their own. How could they do such a thing as that when there were no preparatory instructions given them P There was only one high school, and in that high School a Woman who was examined was the first woman who passed the high examination. And that was the beginning of the real high education. Calcutta has taken the foremost ground in woman's higher education. There is a high school there, and there are also a great many other advantages for women, especially among the Brahmins of Calcutta, called heretics by the other Brahmins. These are not so much opposed to the education of women ; they allow a few of their girls to remain unmarried and give them higher education, but public sentiment is against them. A great change has taken place in the higher education of women in India since 1883. Just one year before that time an educational commissión, as it was called, was appointed by the English government which went all over the country and investigated the matter of education of boys and girls, and these 66 International Council of Women. English officials, some of them, were very learned men, who knew what the condition of education was in India, and they appointed representative men to come and give their testimony as to the necessary changes in the educa- tional system of the country, and ever since that time many people have tried to get women to enter the medical colleges of India. The Hindoos liken education to nectar, and they say if women have education they will become immortal and get all the country and kill the men. If education is given to women, of course the women will turn on the men and tread them down and kill them or do something dreadful, and so, of course, they think it best not to give them education. They believe, in common with most peo- ple, that woman was created from the rib of Adam, and just as the rib is crooked so woman is crooked, and if they try to make her straight she never will be straight, and since the object of education is to try to make people straight it is of no use to give it to woman. Some said that the very constitution of woman was not fit for education; these good angels and beautiful beings were too delicate to study anything. They were not too delicate to work in the fields, and carry brick, and climb three stories, and work with men, and, in addition to that, to do the house- work and take care of the baby, and take care of the husband, too ; but for education they were too delicate. And they said their brains did not weigh as heavy as men's brains, and so it was not best to give us any higher educa- tion at all; our brains could not stand the exertion, and that the brains, if once turned away from the housework and care of babies, it would increase the misery and bring quarrels into the family. In our country we are not strange to quarrels. Again, at certain times it was thought that it was necessary for women to have some physicians of their own sex, but when the question came before the government they hesitated to give women any place in their colleges, so they wanted to obtain the opinion of all our men who were highly edu- cated, and a good many of them answered in the usual way, that if medical education were given to women they would surely be unsexed by it, and therefore they must not be given it. But somehow or other a few people pre- vailed over this idea and at last the government threw open the college doors to women, and now there are a few women who go and take their lessons with men, and, what I am proud to say, in Bombay a few English women and a few Hindoos and a few Parsee women go there to take their lessons. When they went with the men they were not hooted and treated badly, but, what is very surprising to know, the men treated them very nicely indeed. But there are no separate colleges provided for women. In 1883 one of our high-caste women who wanted higher education had no college open to her and she left that country and came to the United States to obtain that edu- cation. At that time, of course, a great many people did not like the idea, and some thought that she would surely fail, but it was proved by her experi- º Education. 67 ence that even Hindoo women had some brains; that even those high-caste women who had been shut out for ages and ages could acquire a medical education. And it was just two years ago that that high-caste woman gradu- ated in the Medical College of Pennsylvania. She proved that woman could learn these things, and even that after learning them she could keep her sex unchanged. She went to our country and died. At the same time she has done some work that will last, I believe, more than her life would. It is a matter of thankfulness to me that a few women in Madras are tak- ing steps to have a medical college, and there are some in Bombay who are preparing to be physicians and practice medicine in their own country, and there are a half-dozen or a dozen who are graduates of the Calcutta college. And other movements are being employed to give women some higher edu- cation. But the greatest need of India to-day is for women teachers of our own country. There is no such thing as training colleges for our women. It is true that there are three normal schools in our country, and in these some little education is given to the future teachers. The third special paper on the topic of the evening, by Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper, President of the Golden Gate Kindergarten Association, was read by Mrs. Frances E. Parker, of Illinois: THE KINDERG ARTEN IN ITS DEVELOPMENT OF FACULTY. I believe, dear friends, there is within us a vast domain of unexplored ter- ritory, as yet unprečmpted and uncultivated, toward which the eye of Freder- ick Froebel, that great educational Columbus, was directed with a steady and divining gaze. And to-day the great educational principles which he discovered and laid down are going forth in every direction, conquering and to conquer. The kindergarten is his enduring monument. The kindergarten concerns itself more with the development of faculty than with the mere imparting of knowledge. It recognizes the fact that all true education is learning transformed to faculty. It does not ask so much, “What does the child know P’’ as “Has the child learned how to learn ?” It looks less to mere acquirements than to the capacity to acquire. It is teaching the little child to teach himself. It is controlling the little child that he may learn the art of self-control. The kindergarten devotes itself more to ideas than to words; more to things than to books. It begets within the child the power of assimilating knowledge for the highest uses of life. The senses are sharpened, the hands are trained, and the body is made lithe and active. The gifts and occupations represent every kind of techni- cal activity. The children must work for what they get. They learn through doing. They thus develop patience, perseverance, skill, and will- power. They are encouraged by every fresh achievement. What they know they must know thoroughly. In his occupations in the kindergarten 68 International Council of Women. the child is required to handle, combine, and create. “Let the very play- things of your children have a bearing upon the life and work of the coming man,” said Aristotle. It is early training that makes the master. This universal instinct of play in the child means something. It should be turned to good account. It should be made constructive in its outcome instead of destructive. This restless activity of the child is the foundation of the inde- fatigable enterprise of the man. This habit of work must be formed early in life, if we would have it a pleasure. Activity is the law of healthful child- hood. Turn it to good account The perceptive faculties in a well-endowed child are far in excess of the reflective faculties. He sees everything. He wants to know about everything. He will find out if he can. Sensible mothers understand this fact, and keep their household gods well out of the way of the young “heir apparent.” Just as old Dolly Winthrop said in “Silas Marner: ” “If you can’t bring your mind to frighten the child off touching things, you must do what you can to keep ’em out of the Way. That’s what I do wi' the pups as the lads are allays a rearing. They will worry and gnaw—worry and gnaw they will, if it was one's Sunday cap as hung anywhere so as they could drag it. They know no difference, God help 'em ; it's the pushing o' the teeth as sets 'em on, that's what's it is.” That's exactly what it is with the restless child. It's the pushing of the teeth—the intellectual molars and bicuspids, so to speak. They are getting ready to masticate their mental food. Bodily vigor, mental activity, and moral integrity are indispensable to a perfected life. All these are cherished and developed in the kindergarten. All these make the man and woman and prepare them for efficient work in every department of life. Every child should have the privilege of making the most of himself by unfolding all that is in him. As has been truly said, “ the poor man suffers wrong when his education is so defective that he can not use his faculties aright, when his senses are blunted, his observation and judgment insecure.” This wrong to the poor may be avoided by early me- thodical training in the kindergarten, thus fitting them for industrial pursuits. For in the kindergarten development, whatever comes in at the open door of the senses is turned into practical power. Habits of observation are cul- tivated. Observing is more than seeing. The child in the kindergarten is taught to observe—that is, to notice with attention—to see truly. What he learns in the kindergarten is calculated to make him keep his eyes wide open to the world about him. He is taught to think, and that is the primal thing. The kindergarten makes the knowledge of ideas wait upon the knowledge of facts, just as it subordinates the cultivation of the memory to the develop- ment of faculty—every faculty of a child is to be developed. And this edu- cating together the head, heart, and hand is the great need of the nation to-day. The kindergarten is the best agency for setting in motion the physical, Education. 69 mental, and moral machinery of a little child, that it may do its own work in its own way. It is the rain and dew and sun to wake the sleeping germ and bring it into self-activity and growth. The heart as well as the head comes in for its share of training. The kindergarten regards right action to be quite as important as rare scholarship. It works for both, knowing that ignorance and lack of character in the masses will never breed wisdom so long as ignorance and lack of character in the individual breed folly. What we need to do is to bring more happiness into childhood, and then we shall bring more virtue, for “virtue kindles at the touch of joy.” The kinder- garten is the “Paradise of Childhood.” Froebel insisted that education and happiness should be wedded ; that there should be as much pleasure in satis- fying intellectual hunger as physical hunger. And should not this be so P Is it not more or less the fault of methods that it is not so P And just here I wish to say that the moral and religious influences of the kindergarten can scarcely be overestimated. The kindergarten does not at- tribute every mistake of a child to total depravity. To be perpetually tell- ing a little child, even a very naughty child, that there is no good thing in him, that he is vile and corrupt, is one of the very best ways of making a rascal out of him if he has any spirit in him, and of making a little hypo- crite out of him if he is mean-spirited and weak. And this holds equally true of all children, whether they come from the palatial homes of the rich or the wretched homes of the poor. There is more ignorance than deprav- ity when a little child goes wrong. He must stumble and fall many times before he learns to walk uprightly, either physically or spiritually. He must learn to climb the stairs of moral difficulty as he learned to climb the house- hold stairs. As we patiently wait for the body to unfold and do its best, wisely guiding it all the while, so should we patiently wait for the soul's unfolding. All education is a growth, not a creation. And to all growth belongs the element of time. A child goes to the kindergarten as an appren- tice goes into a shop, to learn something. He knows little. He has every- thing to find out. His mind is the tool-chest. His faculties are the imple- ments. Suppose he does make mistakes. His mistakes are not depravity. We are none of us born with the “trade of conduct ’’ learned. What are the mistakes of a child P. It is the little carpenter at work with the hammer and nails, trying his best to drive the nail, but hitting his thumb instead of the nail. Poor little fellow ! He has the worst of it. See that irrepressible boy The basilar faculties in him are tremendous. They are the drive- wheels which, rightly used, will make him a leader and a commander among men. Train that boy in and through these faculties. All the faculties have mates. Over against combativeness stands benevolence. If the former is likely to get on the rampage, touch up the latter. If courage is likely to mount into rashness, touch up fear a little. The primal ideal of all govern- ment should be to teach a child to govern himself at the earliest possible 70 International Council of Women. period. And to learn how to govern himself a child must be indulged in self-government. The true teacher will be aiming all the time at the child’s enfranchisement—not in making him an unwilling slave. The law of kind- ness bodied forth in eye and lip and hand will make a royal government. The rafters of love will make a home of law. And this is the principle on which the kindergarten governs its pupils. The law of duty is recognized by the little ones as the law of love. They are taught to love one another, to help one another, to be kind to one another, to care for one another. The child in the kindergarten is not only told to be good, but he is actually helped to be good. The very foundations on which true character rests are laid in the kindergarten. Habits of virtue, truth, purity and usefulness are here inculcated, and what is character but crystallized habit? As to the moral effect of the kindergarten, a little three-year-old can best tell the story. A bright little blonde lassie of three years, belonging to one of our kindergartens, was holding tightly the hand of her lady guardian as they wandered among the marvels of the Mechanics' Institute Fair. It was high carnival with the little kindergarteners. This nervous little midget was wild with delight at the wonderful things to be seen on every hand. Just then she was delving into the mysteries of the chicken incubator. Suddenly one of the regular deputized policemen who do duty during the fair passed by. He did not escape the vigilance of “little blue eyes.” “See, there’s a perlice ” she ejaculated, with resonant, ringing tone, pointing her little finger deprecatingly as she spoke. “There he goes,” she added, with increased fervor. “Why, he needn’t be a watchin' of us, 'cos we don’t nip nothin' now, sence we went to the kindergarten ” The poor little dear—she had no idea that a “perlice ’’ could have any other possible vocation than to be watching her and the other little Barbary Coasters, who had been wont aforetime to “nip’’ fruit and vegetables on the sly as a sort of filial duty imposed by thriftless, shiftless parentage. Ten years ago there was not a single free kindergarten west of the Rocky Mountains. There are now over thirty in San Francisco alone, including those in orphanages and day homes. Branching out from San Francisco as a center, they have extended in every direction, from the extreme northern part of Washington Territory to Lower California and New Mexico, and they have planted themselves in Oregon, Nevada, Colorado, and in almost every large city in California. The work in San Francisco has been phe- nomenal. No city in the Union has made more rapid strides in this work among the little children than San Francisco. This is owing to the fact that persons of large wealth have been induced to study the work for themselves, and have become convinced of its permanent and essential value to the State. Foremost among those who have given to the support of these kindergartens is Mrs. Leland Stanford, who has, from first to last, given over $30,000 to Education. 71. the support of these beneficent schools for the neglected children of San Francisco. Over eight hundred children have been under training in the Stanford kindergartens the past year. Mrs. Senator Hearst and others of generous mind also support these schools. As the kindergarten is the very basis of technical and industrial education, Mrs. Stanford has made a study of it, in connection with the great plans contemplated by the Leland Stanford, Jr., University. The necessity of unfolding the minds of little children through their senses, rather than dwarf- ing them through the meaningless repetition of mere words, is coming to be felt more and more by all thoughtful educators. It is the aim of the kinder- garten to make men and women who will be self-governing and thus be a law unto themselves; men and women who will succeed by their own skill and industry. Hence the kindergarten gets hold of the little child just as early in life as possible—the earlier the better. It believes, with Lord Brough- ham, that a child can and does learn more before the age of six years than it does or can learn after that age during his whole life, however long it may be. For this is the root-life of the human plant, and the root-life must for- ever determine what the stem and blossom shall be. In short, the world is beginning to recognize the fact that a general education that has not in it some provision for a special education and training in some particular in- dustry is practically a failure. Technical and industrial education for the people is no theory. It is a question of civilization. It is a national ques- tion, and touches the very existence of the state. The kindergarten lies at the foundation of this sort of education. All honor, then, to those who foster these blessed schools for little children. Governor Stanford struck the key-note when he said that he believed the surest foundation on which any educational structure could rest was the rock of thorough kindergarten training, begun at the earliest possible age—at the age when moral and industrious habits are most easily formed, the taste improved, and the finer feelings which give fiber to the will are cultivated. >k >k >k And the primal aim of all education, from the kindergarten straight through to the university, should be the unfolding of all that is in the human being, the equipping of the young for maintaining themselves in honest independence. Some one has said there are three ways of earning a living— by working, by begging, or by stealing—and those who come to years of responsibility and do not work are doing one of the other two things, dress it out in whatever pretty guise you please. I believe it was Florence Night- ingale who said, “If to three R's, reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic, there be not added something that will give the mind a practical turn, we shall soon have a fourth R, which shall stand for rascality.” < * * That notable man, General John Eaton, the late United States Commis- sioner of Education, in his annual report made this significant suggestion : 72 International Council of Women. “The experience of mob violence we have passed through should suffice to bring us to the conviction that our safety is only in the most vigilant use of every instrumentality fitted to assure the thorough training of every child in the land, not only in virtue and Intelligence, but also in the pursuit of some useful and honorable vocation.” Better, far better, that we plant kindergar- tens and organize industrial schools and educate the young for work, than to let them grow up in such a manner as to be good for nothing else than to form Jacobin clubs and revolutionary brigades, which will be the beginning of the end of our greatness and prosperity, and of the Republic itself. We may make laws and constitutions on paper, but character is a growth, and to all growth belongs the element of time. We must call the little children from the very earliest years and prepare them for useful and honorable citi- zenship. I have tried to outline the plan ; let me briefly summarize : Take the very little child into the kindergarten and there begin the work of phys- ical, mental, and moral training; put the child in possession of his powers; develop his faculties; unfold his moral nature ; cultivate mechanical skill in the use of the hands; give him a sense of symmetry and harmony; a quick judgment of number, measure, and size; stimulate his inventive faculties; make him familiar with the customs and usages of well-ordered lives; teach him to be kind, courteous, helpful, and unselfish ; inspire him to love what- soever things are true and pure and right and kind and noble ; and thus equipped physically, mentally and morally, send him forth to the wider range of study, which should include within its scope some sort of industrial training—that is, the putting of the boy or girl into the possession of the tools for technical employment or for the cultivation of the arts of drawing and kindred employments—and still further on the boy and girl should have a completed trade. Thus they will be prepared to solve the rugged problem of existence by earning their own living through honest, faithful work. Louisa Reed Stowell, M. S., F. R. M. S., delegate of the Western Association of Collegiate Alumnae, read the following paper : RETROSPECTION. Mrs. STOWELL. The annals of education during the early part of this century furnish us with the story of a girl who was accustomed to sit on the steps of a Boston School-house to listen to the boys' recitations. We may regard this young person as the typical woman of our century, and the purpose of my paper will be an effort to show how long she remained on the steps and what direction she took when she left them. * * * In 1854 one woman, speaking for many, says: “We claim the opportu- nity for unfolding our powers in the conditions most favorable to growth. We demand education that can give efficiency to the intellect, light to the Education. 73 feelings, and dignity to the whole character.” From the tone of some res- olutions adopted at an educational convention in New York it would seem that such expressions were becoming frequent. “Woman’s education,” said the gentlemen in convention, “being intended especially to prepare her for the duties of wife and motherhood, should be concrete rather than abstract. It should be for use. In the study of arithmetic, for instance, the object should be to learn its practical application and not to become con- versant with the principles of numbers. Culinary matters should be the basis, and ornamental branches the finish of her education.” The door was not opened, but, evidently, the knocking was becoming somewhat annoying to those within ; nothing easier than to open a window and advise those women to go home and attend to cooking | Did they go? We shall see . We have another voice from one of the girls on the steps in the same year, 1854. “We claim,” she says, “the opportunity of pursu- ing the same course of study provided for males, and that this shall be lim- ited only by inclination or capacity.” To the question, “Are there not now ample opportunities for this extended culture ?” she replies emphat- ically, “There is scarcely a single seminary in the land that pretends to give the severe discipline of the male schools. Even in the normal schools a lower course of study is provided for women. This is a deep and burning disgrace l’’. Two years later Mrs. Seager, of the Genesee Wesleyan Sem- inary, asks, “Why should the munificence of rulers and legislatures be poured out for the ample, the profuse endowment of institutions for the benefit of one sex from the privileges of which the other is excluded ?” At about this period a woman in Michigan, through the medium of an educational journal, asks that her State should endow a university for women, as it had already done for men. Following speedily upon the appeals we have quoted came responses, not at first from institutions, but from individual men—men who are an honor to manhood, an honor to humanity. President Fairchild, of Ohio; Mat- thew Vassar and Henry W. Sage, of New York; William Ellery Channing and Mark Hopkins, of Massachusetts, and President James B. Angell, of Michigan, are among those who, at an early date and while the cause was still an unpopular one, responded in no uncertain tone. “That women are capable of the highest culture,” said the gentleman last named, “ the gen- eration to which Mrs. Somerville and Mrs. Browning belong will hardly deny. All must admit that it would be a great gain if we could secure to every young woman who desires it an education as thorough, generous, and stimulating as our colleges afford to young men.” + “ ” From the date last named, progress was sure and at times rapid. Colleges for women were rapidly multiplied in the East, while in the West the gains of co-education made such expedients unnecessary. - The report of the Commissioner of Education presents some statistics at 6 74 International Council of Women. this point that for brilliant contrast would rejoice the heart of a Macaulay. In 1870 there were 33 schools for women that could be called colleges; in 1875 there were 202 ; and while in 1855 there were not one-half dozen of the higher schools open to women, to-day there are not one-half dozen worthy of the name whose doors are closed to them. Columbia has given her degree to Alice Freeman Palmer, and has, at a very recent date, opened her doors to women who wish to do post-graduate work. Yale gave a degree to a woman in 1885; Johns Hopkins has also con- ferred a degree on a woman, and we may safely conclude that whatever reso- lutions may be formulated hereafter, these cases will prove precedents dangerous to the records of those worthy institutions. Princeton has not yet shown a similar hospitality; but, in the address of Dr. Patton, the recently appointed president, we find sentences that indicate the presence of levers of modern thought, and we are too well acquainted with the chemistry of that ingredient to doubt the result. “We grow !” says Dr. Patton. “We need more students. There are fields already white to the harvest, and Princeton must put in the sickle pretty soon or be con- tent to be a gleaner by the wayside.” And again he says: “ There are some good things in Paris, in Edinburgh, in Berlin; but the typical American university will not be a simple imitation of any of these.” Probably the good president spoke better than he knew. However that may be, we prophesy that Princeton will one day admit that the genius of the American college is not in sympathy with any ruling that excludes from the halls of learning any person or class of persons who desire their advan- tages. Princeton needs more students | Let her open her doors to women and she will find them. The fields are indeed white to the harvest, and we await the sickle. ~ As I have said, in 1855 there were not one-half dozen of the better col- leges open to women. To-day the graduates of the higher halls of learning are numbered by thousands. The change in public sentiment is not less pro- nounced and encouraging. I quote from educational literature of the fifth and eighth decades of this country a few sentences which will serve as straws to show the changing course of the current. 1850. “Culture for women should never develop into learning. Only an unwomanly woman could try to become learned, and she would try in vain, as she has not the mental ability of a man.” 1880. “The admission of women into schools heretofore exclusively open to men is the straw on the moving current to tell us what is coming. It is in accordance with the spirit of our institutions that women shall be treated as self-determining beings.” < * * Of the many collegiate alumnae who are in happy homes, brightening and purifying our social life, and leading the way to a most enlightened mother- hood, I can not speak further than to congratulate our country on their num- Education. 75 ber and to wish it much larger than it is. * * * If I were to state, in a word, the duty of our time, I should declare it to be an unending effort to prove the beneficial effects of the higher training of women on our social and national life. * * * Miss Rena A. Michaels, Ph. D., Dean of the Woman’s Col- lege, Northwestern University, then spoke on CO-EDUCATION. DEAN MICHAELs. The stable arguments of the anti-coeducationists of twenty years ago are certainly familiar to you all. They told us that the young women could not endure the strain of a university training, and, therefore, they added that the standard of the university curricula would have to be lowered if young women were admitted. In those days they were very fond of hanging above our heads that sword of Damocles—namely, that young women who were co-educated would never have the honor, as Lucy Stone has put it, of being even a relict of Mr. Brown or Mr. Jones. These arguments have been so thoroughly refuted by the logic of facts that we never hear them mentioned in these days unless, indeed, it is in some of Mrs. Linton's absurdities or by some Rip Van Winkle reviewer, who seems for the last fifteen years to have been a denizen of Sleepy Hollow. I doubt not that there are many of my hearers who have read Dr. Winchell's excellent book, entitled “Sketches of Creation.” You re- member, in the closing chapters of that book, he has described what may be possibly the closing scene in the history of this planet. That he has taken that asserted scientific fact that the earth is gradually cooling off, and has evolved it to its logical conclusion. He has drawn a very vivid picture of that possible time when the northern and southern polar belts shall have gradually approached each other until there is left only that little line of verdure along the equator, and gradually this, too, shall be covered with ice and snow; and this race which has built its palaces, its temples, and its domes shall have dwindled down to a solitary aged couple, childless and alone, the sad remnant of that race that had its beginning in the Garden of Eden. But when we examine the statistics of the anti-coeducationists, we see that upon no such touching scene will the march of progress of modern history bring us; for under these gradually changing social conditions that day must surely come when this race, with all its magnificent possibilities of intellect and handicraft; this race that has built its Babylon, its Troy, its Athens, its Rome, its Paris and its Washington; this race that has had its Moses, its David, its St. Paul, its Homer, its Virgil, its Dante, its Shakespeare and its Brown- ing; this race that has had its Solomon, its Darius, its Caesar, its Charle- magne, its Napoleon, its Gladstone; this race, with all its magnificent possi- bilities, I say, shall in the end have dwindled down to a solitary old maid standing on the equator, friendless and alone, with no loving hand to write her epitaph, “ Died of eating forbidden fruit.” 76 International Council of Women. We are met in these days by very many objectors to co-education, thought- ful men and women who have no fear for the moral effects of co-education, and have only praise for its intellectual results; but they come to us with this earnest question : “What is to be the effect upon home life? Are our girls to become masculine P’’ St. Beuve said that in three-fourths of men there is a poet, who sometimes dies young ; and in my relations with young women I am convinced that in every girl there is a mother, and that, whether ever appearing in the actual state of motherhood or not, the girl or the woman is always exercising that universal instinct of motherhood within her. You will pardon me if I draw the illustration of my thought from the institution with which I have the honor to be connected. I am sure it is equally true at Ann Arbor or at Cornell as at Evanston. As I go daily into the rooms of my young women I am convinced that no amount of Greek or philosophy or mathematics will ever eradicate from the soul of the girl the home instinct. If I go into the room of the young man, I find it is the place where he keeps his books, where he studies, where he sleeps; it is his mental workshop; his life is sought elsewhere; his pleasures are found else- where. But when I go into the room of my young woman, I find dainty cur- tains, pictures, needlework, books of poetry and art, and the geranium and pet canary in the window; not a workshop, but a home where the young woman naturally lives out the instinct of her mother-heart—that instinct which leads her to want something that is dependent on her for love and care. We hear a great many philippics in these days about the influence of books upon women ; but the fact is that an all-wise Creator has so implanted the instinct of wife-love and mother-love in the soul of woman that no educa- tion nor co-education—no, nor the ballot-box itself—will ever be able to eradi- cate it. I care not how long a young woman's Soul may have pulsated to the rhythm of the Homeric meters; I care not, indeed, how long she may have been under the alluring charms of conic sections; when all is tried and all is done and all is counted, all great arts and all great philosophies, just let the man appear whom her soul recognizes, and straightway love puts its hand out and outreaches all things. I have noticed that educated women make just as many blunders in the choice of their husbands as do educated men in the choice of their wives. You see in the papers that the West is co-educational. and I want to make it emphatic. You doubtless have seen also the statement that a certain col- lege in the West has lately excluded young women. I think the name of that college is Adelbert. We never knew of it until they excluded young women, and we thought at the time it was a very shrewd advertising dodge. But since I have come to Washington and met one of the good ladies of Cleve- land, I have been let into the secret. She tells me that the young women took all the salutatories and valedictories, and, moreover, that the college had recently elected a president who had been dead fifty years, although unfor- Education, - 77 tunately not buried. I understand that Adelbert is talking about an annex, I want to say here to-night, and I can say it with grace, because I am an Eastern woman, that those bright, enthusiastic, large-brained and big-hearted young women of the West, those young women who have in their eyes the distant horizons of their prairie homes, will have nothing to do with annexes. Michigan University has taught them too good a lesson in the other direc- tion. In the Mississippi Valley there is growing up another society—a soci- ety that will have a new type of manhood and of womanhood, because it is co educational. Young men and women are learning to have a mutual respect for each other intellectually and morally. It was in the West, among the Wisconsin hills, that that girl was born, who, as the woman Frances Willard, the woman and the philanthropist, is loved and revered by all the young women of America for her vestal purity. My girls call her “ St. Frances.” She is the woman whose genius and deep-veined humanity and inspiring words of sympathy have touched and united the men and women of two continents. Such is the type of womanhood that is being developed in the Mississippi Valley, and it is the type of which the poets dream. Cora A. Benneson, A. M., L. L. B., Michigan University; Fellow in History, Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, was the next speaker. / COLLEGE FELLOWSHIPS FOR WOMEN. Miss BENNESON. I beg to call your attention to the benefits of a move- ment quite new in the history of higher education—the founding of college fellowships for women. And, lest there should be any misapprehension, let me ask you, in the beginning, not to confound fellowships with scholar- ships. - ". Scholarships are commonly aids granted to undergraduates to enable them to complete a college course when they have pecuniary need of such assist- ance, or they are sometimes given, as at Cornell University, to those candi- dates for admission who pass the best examinations, ability alone being con: sidered. Most of our colleges offer scholarships. Fellowships, on the other hand, are honors conferred on graduates who have shown special proficiency in some subject, to give them opportunity for advanced study of a high character. The holder of a fellowship is expected to reside at the college and to continue her work in the main independently, but may have the supervision and assistance of professors, the use of libraries and apparatus. Besides free residence and tuition, an amount is usually granted her, about equal to the expenses of a college year. - The advantages of fellowship are twofold : first, to the college; second, to the holder of the fellowship. - The scholarship and culture of the college are promoted by the presence of a number of students of advanced standing, pursuing special researches 78 International Council of Women. with enthusiasm. A beneficial influence is exerted upon the entire life of the institution. The Fellows are naturally leaders in the debating societies, the literary and scientific organizations. The under-graduates are aided by observing the aims and methods of students of longer experience. The fel- lowships bridge over, in a measure, that unfortunate gulf which often lies between the faculty and the great body of the students. Occupying an intermediate position between the two, the Fellows, if they will, may fre- quently render substantial assistance to the under-graduates, whose difficul- ties they understand because they have so recently been in the same posi- tion themselves, while it may perhaps be helpful for professors, at times, to know from those more constantly associated with the students than it is pos- sible for them to be, how far their methods are meeting the needs of their classes. To the holder of a fellowship, its value will depend upon her personal ability. At the least, it is an opportunity to test her power. If she have natural fitness for her work and habits of industry, she may obtain a grasp of her subject which will lead to exceptional usefulness. If the fellowship fall to one of rare talent, she may be enabled thereby to add directly to the sum of the world’s knowledge. The spheres of human thought have now so widened that, in order to render any important service in the way of original work, it is necessary to become a specialist. A fellowship offers the best conditions for this. The student is relieved from care as to material wants. She has at her command libraries, laboratories, and all of the college appliances for research and experiment, with a previous training which teaches her how to use these, and she has her time free from interruption. Only those can appreciate the full value of such aids who have tried to pursue investigations far from any good library or center of learning, or amid pressing social claims. - The usual curriculum of a college covers So wide a variety of topics that, even under the elective system, it offers little opportunity for specializing ; nor is it well to specialize until the foundations of a liberal education are laid. But a fellowship comes as a supplement to a college course, after the tastes are clearly defined, and then the attention may be directed to one subject with hope of mastering it, and without great danger of narrowness. The system of fellowships was introduced into this country from Great Britain, but, like most of the institutions we have borrowed from her, has been variously modified to suit American ideas. For a long time the older colleges of our country have offered such honors to men. Harvard has 13 fellowships; Yale, 3 ; Columbia, 7 ; Princeton, 7; Washington and Lee University, 1 ; Pennsylvania University, I. These have been restricted, with a few exceptions, to their own graduates. To develop the system on a broader plan and to make it a most conspicuous success was reserved for Johns Hopkins University. It opened its twenty fellowships to graduates Education. 79 * -s; from any college, and, as a consequence, has drawn to itself from the best talent of all. To-day, when a professor's chair is vacant, his successor is quite apt to be sought among the fellows of Johns Hopkins University. Similar results are to be hoped from the founding of college fellowships for women. Not only will they offer opportunity for excellence in the chosen specialties, but institutions will know where to look when they wish professors or teachers in those subjects. To-day, even in the colleges exclusively for women, with the exception of Wellesley, there is a much larger number of men than women in the faculties, while few of our leading co-educational institutions have yet recognized the attainments of their women by appointments to professorships. At present the fellowships open to women are 8 at Cornell University, 6 at Bryn Mawr College, I at Wesleyan University. The eight fellowships at Cornell are conferred upon men and women on equal terms, while a portion of the Sage fund, amounting to $50,000, has been set apart for the estab- lishment of scholarships and fellowships for women exclusively. The appointments are for one year, or, in cases of exceptional merit, for two years. - Of the six fellowships at Bryn Mawr five are open to graduates of any col- lege of good standing, and, “generally speaking, are given to the candidate who has studied the longest or whose work affords the best promise of future success.” (See Byrn Mawr College programme.) They are awarded in the subjects of Biology, History, Mathematics, Greek and English. One, the Eu- ropean fellowship, is restricted to Byrn Mawr graduates, is unlimited as to subject, and entitles to a year's study at some foreign university. Thus far the Bryn Mawr fellowships have been held by twelve persons. Of these, beside the five still at the college, one is associate professor of history at Vassar, a second has a responsible place in the U. S. Bureau of Agriculture in this city, a third holds a college position in Greek, two are continuing their studies, the one in Nova Scotia, the other at the University of Zurich, two are teaching in normal schools. The fellowship of Wesleyan University is awarded to that member of its senior class who shall pass the best examination in Greek. - The Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers five graduate scholar- ships which are in effect fellowships. Although Johns Hopkins University does not commonly open its doors to women, it has done so on one occasion. Mrs. Christine Ladd Franklin was invited by the trustees for three years (1879–1882) to continue her stud- ies at the university, and was granted the regular stipendium of a Fellow. Her specialty is mathematics. The alumnae of Michigan University are raising a fund to establish one or more fellowships of $8,000, which will afford each an annual income of $4oo. 80 International Council of Women. A fellowship at Michigan University is now offered by the Western Asso- ciation of Collegiate Alumnae to that one of its members who shall present the most satisfactory thesis before June 15, 1888, the decision to be referred to a joint committee of the members of the faculty and of the association. This fellowship is not restricted to a year, but is subject to the faculty's ap. proval of work done, an arrangement which seems preferable to the one- year system, since that hardly gives time for extended investigation, and under the limitation, work well begun may be dropped for lack of opportu- nity to complete it. In Great Britain fellowships have often been conferred for life, but now a custom of limiting them to six years is gaining favor. The benefits which have resulted to the literary and scientific world from English fellowships will be apparent if one will glance at the title-pages in any well-selected library and notice how often we are indebted for the most fruitful investigations of special subjects to the holders of fellowships. At Newnham College, Cambridge, England, there is already one fellow- ship for women (called, however, a studentship), while another is about to be endowed. There seems, indeed, no way at present, in which the higher education of women can be advanced so effectively as by the founding of fellowships for them in our colleges where none now exist, and in adding to their num- ber where they have already been established. Martha McLellan Brown, Vice-President Wesleyan Female College, Cincinnati, Ohio, was then presented to the audience. INSTITUTIVE POWER. . - Mrs. BROWN. I have the honor to represent the oldest chartered college for women, the Cincinnati Wesleyan Female College. Half a century ago its founders, under the inspiration of the honored and beloved Mrs. Mary Wilber, led the battle and won the victory for woman’s higher education. This grand pioneer of woman's scholastic education, in founding the Wesleyan College was just four years in advance of the honored organization which called this eminent Council. That grand old institution has given her noble degrees to about six hundred and fifty graduates, many of whom occupy the highest places of usefulness and culture in the Christian world to-day, and one of whom the citizens of Washington were delighted to honor in the person of Mrs. Hayes, wife of ex-President Hayes. Simultaneous with the progress of this great experiment have been the steps of woman’s advancement. It will be our province in this paper to examine the secret springs of this progressive power. Institutive power may be defined as that force which makes for the development, amelioration, and protection of mankind. Statesmen may think of it as political force. Ecclesiastics may think of it as religious force, and some philosophers may regard it sim- ply as instinct. * * * º - i- Education. 81. Practically, all institutions represent some sentiment or principle of their founders. Usually they also represent a self-sacrificing activity for some movement of greater or less importance to the general public. Whether old or new, they are the movements of great personality in their founders. * * * As the public, free institutions of our country represent the independ- ent, free personality of our fore-parents of the Revolution, so all reforms establish some eleemosynary institutions of permanent philanthropy. * * * Now, it is not a question in empirical sequences whether this strength of character is greater in men or in women. The main point under review is this, that the development of the ethical personality of women, secured by their higher education during the last half-century, has given impetus to the march of progress in this country unparalleled in history. All the instincts and aspirations of cultured women hold them tenaciously to the sacred obligations of unimpeachable right. * * * By virtue of their prime ministry over all social interests, the world expects them to stand in the unequal battle of life with greater independence than men. And they meet the world's expectations; they stand nobly, royally, at the nation's stadium for the high- est good without money-earning stimulus, without emoluments, without per- quisites, and they are, therefore, more frequently institutive factors in the reforms of the civilized world. * * * Great numbers of educated American women stand committed to such reforms as may not only abate the evils and wrongs of society, but elevate the people to a sense of public responsibility or rectitude. * * * They stand heroically demanding justice, morality, free- dom, and character. They seek to elevate the free personality of the people. For liberty is the compass of responsibility. * * * -- All actual development proceeds through the individual to general forms of culture, as educational, political, social, religious. * < * The institutive principle in this higher culture which reaches out for new fields of activity, the institutive feelings which seek the broken foundations of human society every- where for repair and improvement, are the very foundation principles of republican government; and, once organized in progressive institutions, they mount and climb and aspire infinitely ; hence the rapid progress of Society. As yet only the masculine portion of this activity is organized pol- itically. The more extensive portion is not conserved in the progressive aims of political science. All estimates of possible attainments leave out woman's institutive force except by co-operative influence. All questions seek solution without reference to this institutive power ; hence many prob- lems evade solution without this generic factor, and some great movements limp and stagger through abnormal existence. Humanity is not a mass of matter acted upon as such by the cosmic forces of gravity, momentum, or electricity. It mounts by a higher impelling power than all these physical forces. When the pendulum of human thought sweeps the whole range of transitions from the organic force, challenging the crystal 82 International Council of Women. to yield its dead properties to feed the living organism, up the scale of forces to the divine conception of spiritual life in mortal man, reflecting the image of the Eternal, this thought sweeps along the path of a law which would unlock all the problems between—a law of superorganic force, operative in the souls of mankind for progress upward, above the last analysis of sensation. Not like pulses beating in upon consciousness from an upper and outer world—a ſex ex machina. Rather it is a throbbing force within the con- sciousness—absolute per se, free, independent and vital by virtue of the creative energy which breathed it into the dead form of humanity. Matter is inert. Whenever matter is moved from a center there is life. This force at the center of human consciousness is more than energy. It is unique. Its command of the periphery is absolute. It knows no sex. It acknowl- edges no individual ambitions, nor even the gravity of social organisms that are destructive. It epitomizes the world of matter and the world of mind. Clearing the environments for the psychic lenses which may add new stars to the old “pathway of the gods”—new divinity in human form, new Christ- liness in human character—still it mounts. Thus closed the able discussion on the various questions of education. To test the feelings of the audience, a resolution was offered and unanimously passed, in favor of opening all the colleges and universities of the country freely to the daughters of the State. Many who had not given much thought to the subject were surprised to learn that so prolonged a struggle had been made by women themselves to secure a foothold, even in those insti- tutions endowed by the State, which women, as well as men, are taxed to support. | The facts presented on this topic roused many to new thought and stirred all to fresh indignation against the injustice that compels one-half the race to a hard struggle for those rights freely accorded the other. With the passing of the res- olution, the interesting sessions of the first day ended. TUESDAY, MARCH 27, 1888. MoRNING SESSION. P H I LANT H R o PIE s. Harriette R. Shattuck, President of the National Woman Suffrage Association for Massachusetts, presided. Invocation by Zerelda G. Wallace. Mrs. SHATTUCK. Before we join in singing the sixteenth song I will ask its author, who is with us to-day, to read it. Let me introduce Mrs. Harriet H. Robinson, of Massachusetts, who, although not a pioneer in the move- ment, is one of the older workers. Mrs. Robinson read the stirring original song, “ Hark the Sound of Myriad Voices,” in the singing of which the audi- ence joined heartily. Mrs. SHATTUCK. The subject for us to consider this morning is philan. thropy. Philanthropy—what is it? We have become so familiar with the word that we are apt to forget that it is a comparatively new one. In olden times there was no such word, because there was no such thing as philan- thropy, for words represent and express ideas and are coined to meet the need which the existence of a new idea brings to the world. The nearest approach to philanthropy in ante-Christian days was the friendship of the Greeks; and friendship is a love between individuals, while philanthropy is the love of the race—the stooping of the higher down to the lower and the helping that lower to arise—the stretching out of the hand and opening of the heart to all less fortunate than ourselves. - As you know, the word comes from two Greek words meaning “ to love '’ and “man,” and expresses the love of man or of humanity; that brotherly love or “charity' of the Bible, which is greater than even hope or faith ; that love which Christ came to make manifest, and which we, by following his example, shall manifest also. It is quite appropriate, therefore, that the first speaker this morning should represent an organization of women which has grown out of the need for woman’s active work in the church. I have the honor of introducing to you Mrs. Isabel C. Barrows, delegate of the Woman's Auxiliary Conference of the Unitarian Association. WHAT UNITARIAN WOMEN ARE DOING. Mrs. BARRows. In preparing this outline of the missionary work of Uni- tarian women my eye chanced to fall upon a newspaper clipping which had - 84 International Council of Women. been sent me by a friend. It is dated September, 1836, and announces a fair for the sale of fancy and useful articles for the purpose of “raising money to support a missionary to the West.” The four ladies who sign it were members of a Unitarian society in Massachusetts, which from that day to this has never failed to raise its annual contribution for missionary work. But the special point of interest in this advertisement is that over fifty years ago women felt the duty laid upon them of raising money for philanthropic purposes, and that the way in which they did it was by the “fair.” As a step toward dispensing with such a laborious way of winning money it is necessary to educate the consciences of men and women to the duty of giving to worthy philanthropic and religious objects systematically and gen- erously. One of the purposes of the society which I am commissioned to represent at this Council is this broader education. If we look over the annals of the Unitarian Church we find many women whose entire lives have been given to works of benevolence and charity. Prior to anti-slavery times there was no one special thing that brought such women to the front from the quiet of their homes and parishes, though the mighty influence which they there exercised may not be measured. But when the tide of feeling rose high against the sufferings of the slave, and later, when the war made such demands on human sympathy, the nobleness of the women of all denominations was aroused, and among those doing their full share toward the amelioration of suffering it is certainly just to count the women of the Unitarian fold. See, again, the list of friendly visitors asso- ciated in carrying out that wise method of dealing with the poorer classes of our communities, known as the Organized Charities, and you will find no mean sprinkling of names of women from Unitarian households. But happily in these various branches of work all sects may and should unite. To wisely educate the deaf or blind child, to generously and judiciously administer relief to the needy, to gather together the feeble- minded and develop the spark of intelligence which would die if left in its natural Surroundings, to rescue young girls from temptation and place them in comfortable homes—these require no subscription to any creed, save the all-inclusive one of love to God and love to man ; they need occasion no sectarian rivalry, save as each should strive to be foremost in good works. Apart from all this, however, many women with fidelity to their religious convictions feel the need of something which shall help to spread the special faith which they believe best suited to redeem the world. It was in accord- ance with this desire that the various women's boards of missions sprang into existence a few years ago. Among others, the women of the Unitarian house- hold of faith felt this impulse, and in 188o they made a modest attempt to follow the excellent example set by their sisters of the orthodox churches. In 1825 the American Unitarian Association was organized chiefly for the purpose of printing and disseminating liberal literature, but also for the Philanthropies. 85 - building up of new or struggling churches and supporting home missionaries. Though made up of a membership of both men and women, it was wholly officered by men. At last one or two women were rather reluctantly admitted to the board, but the masculine element was so predominant that the feminine influence was hardly felt. There were many women, however, who believed that the denomination was losing much power by this practically one-sided arrangement, and they determined to organize an auxiliary society, one whose main object should be to develop the religious life in the individual members, thus quickening the conscience into such vigorous life that the secondary object, that of raising money, should be made easier, because people readily give for that in which they heartily believe. Our conference was therefore organized to stand beside the American Unitarian Association. Hence our name, “The Women's Auxiliary Conference.” Our permanent organization was effected at the Saratoga National Confer- ence, in September, 1880, with Miss Abby W. May as president, and a director for every State in which the Unitarian churches existed. The avowed objects as presented to the women were to enlist the sympathies and energies of Unitarian women in the growth of the liberal faith; to strengthen and in- crease the religious life among the members themselves; to bring them into more friendly relation with each other, and especially with those of the same faith, in struggling societies wherever they might be ; to awaken an interest in missionary work, and in the circulation of liberal literature, and, lastly, to raise money for the general objects recommended by the National Con- ference of Unitarian Churches. Branch conferences, closely united with the parent society, and paying their membership fees into its treasury, have been formed in a large number of parishes. In these branches there are classes of religious study and dis- cussion made up entirely of women. Our branches now reach from Maine to California, and from the North to the Sunny South, wherever we have Unitarian churches, though there is a sister organization comprising the central Western States, known as “The Women’s Western Unitarian Conference,’’ that shares the national field with us. If we were asked to point out the most distinctive feature of our undertakings we should unhesitatingly say that the “Post-office Mission '' is the most unique and perhaps the most effective thing connected with the Conference. It occupies a large share of the efforts and strength of our Conference and yearly tens of thousands of tracts, pamphlets, sermons, and papers are distributed over the whole country. The method has this advan- tage over the system followed by the older churches, that reading matter is sent only to those who take the trouble to ask for it and pay for its trans- mission. In supporting missionaries, in helping to house new societies, and in all work of that kind the Conference has done its fair share, and is doing more 86 International Council of Women. each year as its coffers are better filled. Of foreign missionary work, that which chiefly absorbs the money and strength of other women's missionary boards, we have attempted nothing, though a few of the branches in the West and many individual Unitarians in the East are greatly interested in the Ramabai circles, and are contributing in an unsectarian way toward the success of this latest effort in behalf of Hindoo women. A new work undertaken by the Unitarian Church has been largely left for the women to carry on, and it enlists their hearty co-operation—the estab- lishment and support of an industrial school among the Crow Indians of Montana. Another thing to which our Conference is pledged is the assistance of women who wish to enter the ministry and who need sympathy and per- haps material aid. The Harvard University Divinity School is closed to women, but the Meadville Theological School throws open its doors and welcomes them to all the advantages which are offered to men, save the scholarships, the word “student’’ in the question of distributing funds being interpreted to mean male students. Here several women have studied and are now studying. Our Conference gladly gives the weight of its influence and such contributions of money as may be necessary to enable as mally as possible to become preachers and pastors. Their message has been gladly received, especially in the West, where in some parishes children growing up under the devoted ministry of consecrated women are so accustomed to their voices that last summer, when one of them exchanged with a clergyman, a little fellow on going home told his mother, in great astonishment, that “a man preached in the church.” He had never heard one before. The good tidings are as welcome from a woman's lips as man's. There has always been the most cordial sympathy between the officers of the American Unitarian Association and the Auxiliary Conference, and if the time were ever to come when the board of the older organization were to have a fair representation of women, it is not unlikely that this auxiliary would be merged in the larger institution, and each would become auxiliary to the other. But that day is apparently far ahead, for, with all its radical ideas, the Unitarian body is essentially conservative in practice. Mean- time the women will work in their own way, enlarging their own hearts and lives, and striving, as best they may, to impart that freer, higher life to those who hunger and thirst for it. The paper of Mrs. Jennie Fowler Willing is given here in its appointed place. WOMAN AS A MISSIONARY. Woman has special aptitude for missionary work ; Christianity is based on self-giving. To reach her best, woman has been obliged to form the habit of self-giving. If she takes the crown of motherhood, her feet Philanthropies. 87 must touch the River of Death, and she must let its bitter spray sprinkle her bowed head. - She feels the poverty and pain of life when her heart-strings are tangled around feet that wander in sin to the world's end. By the cradle and dying bed she learns the helplessness of human strength and the need of divine aid. Many a woman lives, as kings are said to rule, “by the grace of God.” In the world's creed, “Men must work and women must pray.” The old Scots, when they baptized a boy, held back his right hand that it might be free to smite his enemies. The cry has been as in Marmion : “You, with Lady Clare, May bid your beads and patter prayer; I gallop to the host.” Piety has been expected of woman. Many a man, himself no saint, has felt it a fine, safe thing to have a priestess in the house. The Methodist, one of the largest of the Protestant denominations, has always given to its women opportunity and scope. The real founder of the church, Susanna Wesley, was a preacher of rare power. Dr. Adam Clark said of her: “If the epithet were not so unusual, I should call her a very able divine.” The first woman's missionary society was organized about a quarter of a century ago. Now most of the denominations have their home and foreign missionary societies. They have a contributing membership of about one and one-half millions. They circulate about one hundred and twenty-five thousand copies of missionary papers, besides millions of pages of leaflets. They hold at least a half-million missionary meetings every year, presided over by women, the addresses made and papers read by the sisterhood that forty years ago would no sooner have thought of doing such a work than they would of taking a journey to the moon. They raise and disburse about two millions of money every year. Their several boards scan each little invest- ment with as much care as if a fortune were to be made in discovering an error in the accounts. The energy that used to be expended upon rag car- pets and patch-work quilts, and, further back, upon spinning and tapestry, has been turned upon the wretched huddling places of women in our own and foreign lands, and millions upon millions have been helped to a better life. The reflex influence of all this work has been measureless. Women have learned their own ability, and they have convinced their brothers that they can be trusted with heavy financial interests. They have seen that the heathenish notions that cramp the feet in China and the brain in India have cast their shadow even over Christian lands. They have learned that the safety of the home, their stronghold, depends upon the permanence of the marriage tie, and the permanence of the marriage tie depends upon the dig- nity of women and the purity of men. Men as well as women must be like Caesar's wife, above suspicion. Women must demand honor for honor, in- 88 International Council of Women. tegrity for integrity, and purity for purity, that the home may rest upon the corner-stone of Christian and mutual respect and love. They have seen in their own land the ripened fruit of the careless sowing of women who are at ease in Zion. The work has given intellectual stimulus. It has shown women their indebtedness to Jesus, the son of Mary, the great leveler, the best friend they ever had or ever will have, and that safety and success depend upon their loyalty to His love. * * * Mrs. SHATTUCK. I now have the pleasure of introducing the delegate of the Western Women’s Unitarian Conference, Victoria M. Richardson. Mrs. RICHARDSON. Outside our General Western Conference, woman’s right to active participation in all the debates had never been questioned. Women asked why the Woman's Conference was organized when the Gen- eral Conference put women upon its board and its programmes and ordained them as its ministers? At first it was hard to get any one to speak. The first year of our existence, at our annual meeting, we had two hours assigned to us. We had much difficulty in finding enough women to fill that time, and were compelled to call to our assistance some of the brethren who favored our movement. In our last annual meeting our programme was so crowded we were compelled to enforce strictly the time rule, and women's hearts burned because they could not report what had been done in their personal field—for our territory extends from Western New York to Dakota, and from the sunny fields of Kentucky to Colorado. An army of busy sec- retaries and State directors has developed the post-office mission work. I think eight years ago we had two ordained women ministers in this great Western field. To-day the State of Iowa alone has five earnest, noble women, making themselves felt, not only in the religious world, but in all good works for the help and development of woman. By their works ye shall know them, and the Woman's Western Conference feels that the eager seekers for truth and light on the lone prairies and the frozen plains of Dakota have been cheered and helped by the inspiration of the literature that has been carried to them by the post-office mission. We care not so much to send our own religious thought, but the general utter- ances of all noble souls, irrespective of theological differences, believing that the best Unitarianism is that which ministers to needy souls, and we dis- tribute to our thousands of interested readers any literature that teaches love to God and love to man. Mrs. SHATTUCK. The next speaker is the delegate and President of the Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic. I introduce to you Mrs. Laura McNeir. Mrs. MCNEIR. I have the honor to represent the mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters of our American heroes, and in explaining my position Philanthropies. - 89 would say to the ladies on the stage that thus far our hands have been so full of supplying the needs of the body that perhaps we have not yet reached the point of woman suffrage. Therefore, if my remarks are not particularly upon that subject I hope it will be understood. * * * Standing at the head of an organization, in which various classes and con- ditions are represented, we have felt that among its many objects the one which aims to teach woman the worth of true dignity, that endeavors to rouse her to a sense of her power and a right application of that power, is indeed the object pre-eminent. For though it is but human to enlist sympathy, when such is needed for the distressed of our country's defenders, when, after awhile, it becomes a pleasant duty to implant seeds of patriotism in the bosoms of our young men and maidens; though it is inspiring to lay fresh laurels upon the brows of heroes whose brave deeds grow brighter with each year's telling; though it is “ sorrowing with sorrow ’’ to mingle our tears with tears of mothers and wives whose lives have been saddened by war's cruel hand, yet the efforts made to awaken and train aright woman's influence is a work so ennobling, so sublimating, that it becomes the pivot upon which every other aim of the order revolves. If it be part of our creed to uphold honor and manliness in man, it is the whole law to keep the value and power of womanhood ever in sight. We have learned through the bitterness of past days that when the stars of America's flag were dimmed by treason's stain, and when her great body poured out its loyal blood to restore their brightness, it was woman's touch that staunched the wound and woman's love that soothed the pain. For, as it is man's prerogative to strike the blow, it is woman’s privilege to bring the healing; and which is the greater power, the might to wound or the right to heal? Ek >k × - With such a power, shall we not use it for the best ? Will we permit it to lie unconscious, unappreciated P Will we waste time in sighing for man's privileges or imitating man's strength P What counts his strength if, after all, we bend it to our will, even if it be in our own way ? What are his privileges compared to woman's influence and its fruits, which began at cre- ation and will last forever, which is as broad as heaven and as vast as eter- nity ? - The CHAIRMAN. There is probably no branch of woman's work that is so universal in its nature as philanthropy. Long before women were educated to any extent or before they were allowed to enter the industries they were taking part in helping mankind. It would therefore be impossi- ble to represent philanthropy without calling upon other countries than our own. We are happy this morning in having here a representative of France, our sister republic, the land which is striving for that for which we are striving, a perfect democracy and perfect equality. The represent- ative from France, Madame Isabelle Bogelot, is to speak on the Prison 7 90 International Council of Women. Reform Work of St. Lazare, Paris. Many of us probably are not able to understand French, but I know we are able to feel the beauty and the grace of the French tongue. Madame Bogelot, delegate of the Prison Work of the Liber- ated of St. Lazare, Paris, delivered her address in French. The following is the translation: Madame Bog ELOT. Those whose names have more authority than mine in art, science, politics and philosophy should have represented France at this Congress. They are Maria Deraismes, Leon Richer, and Hubertine Auclert, who are especially interested in woman suffrage and the vindication of the political and social rights of women. There is Emily de Morsier, who is vice-president of our Society of Pris- ons. Hers is a generous heart which struggles for the amelioration of woman’s fate and the overthrow of prejudice. She desires equal rights for both sexes, and takes part in all the humanitarian and progressive societies. She desires arbitration always; no more wars between nations. She has studied the origin of religions, and finds in each an ideal of justice which must be the guide of life. In education, we have Caroline de Barrau, who devotes herself especially to the reform of the University curriculum, and claims equal education for the two sexes and equal opportunities in political and social life. She is a brave woman, both in heart and mind. You See, ladies and gentlemen, my country was capable of coming among you. Philanthropy is here specially represented by myself, but I am charged to assure you of the sympathy and the loyalty of our countrywomen named above. I have crossed the ocean in order to join you. I am well recom- pensed for it. My eyes are dazzled by the spectacle of this reunion. My ears, to which your language is unfamiliar, can yet frequently comprehend, thanks to the clearness of your discourses. You have deeply moved my heart by your delicacy and consideration for me. Many among you will remember that you have had French ancestors, and that France gave her blood to America to aid in the conquest of independence and liberty. In me you entertain the nation I represent, and you treat me as a sister. I am grateful to you for it. Permit me to give you some details concerning the work of reform which I direct in Paris. This society takes its name from the Prison of St. Lazare, the only house of detention for the women of Paris. Its motto is: “Lift up the woman who is in danger of ruin, and furnish to the saved one, without distinction of race or nationality, the means of re-establishing herself.” The work is to aid woman in every epoch of her life. It undertakes the salvation of young girls who are confided to it, and protects the infants whenever it has the opportunity to do so. I desire especially to limit this article to the fate of the female prisoners, but it is impossible to explain the ultimate aim of our society without presenting a few considerations of a general character. Philanthropies. 91 If the fate of the female prisoner saddens and attracts us in spite of the faults she has committed, if we entertain for her sentiments of pity and indulgence, it is because our conscience cries that this woman has rights and that we owe a duty to her. The more the patroness enters into intimate acquaintance with the prisoner, the more she discovers the responsibility of society, which has been unjust toward woman—always sacrificed to man, brought up in inferior moral and intellectual conditions—which excuses his faults and diminishes, even to forgetfulness, her personality. The evil is a grave one; it has deep roots, but it is not without remedy; it is sufficient for us who gauge it that we wish to cure it, in order to diminish and perhaps to destroy it entirely. We must fight, hand to hand, all prejudices, all injustice, and, as I said in a report presented to our society in 1886: “The social problems would not be difficult to solve if we applied always and everywhere principles of justice, of morality, and of fraternity.” Conferences, congresses bring together and unite ; they stimulate the desire to do better; they instruct by exchange of ideas; they throw light on points hitherto obscure and ignored. The success of the cause of woman will be the recompense of these reunions, composed of those who are sincere in their convictions. The female prisoner is a social wound, and the prisons are the places where the evil is propagated and aggravated. We must, at all hazards, prevent human beings from entering the prison, and when mis- fortune has put them there it is our duty to attempt the impossible, as it were, in order to sweeten their captivity and to give them a distaste for that sort of existence. Such is the end which the work of the Liberated of St. Lazare desires to attain. It knows the female prisoner in the prison, and is employed in preparing for her return to the world. The immediate aid con- sists in the visits which the benefactresses make during the detention of the prisoner; it is a rôle of consolation, comfort, and hope for her. This is the period of study for the visiting lady; she observes thus the character of the condemned, who appeals to her voluntarily. The work of the Liberated continues its beneficent action in giving some small aid in the way of money on the day of liberation ; but this method of help should be exceptional. The Society has, in addition, two modest asylums which receive temporarily the discharged who has no family or who is not reconciled with her family on the day of her discharge. In these asylums the liberated ones are affection- ately counseled by guardians. They seek to stimulate their energy by awak- ening in them will power, a plan so warmly advocated by Mme. Concepcion Arenal in her report presented to the Congress Penitentiare of Rome, in December, 1885. In order to lift up the discharged woman it is necessary that she should desire it ; and, in order that she should desire it, it is neces- sary that she should be able to will it. Thus the effort of her will is aided in pointing out to her the establishments where she has some opportunity of finding for herself work—where she may debate concerning the conditions 92 International Council of Women. and the price. She must have the responsibility of her regained liberty. It is only in this way that one can hope for a complete cure. The freed one must realize that she is her own mistress, and she must be led to solicit for herself our support and our aid. This manner of action offers some chance of success, but it demands much work from those who make the trial. The female prisoner is the result of a social condition. She is a fallen and help- less woman. She has but little power of resistance, and in order to conduct herself rightly none can ignore the fact that she must resist with perseverance. Injustice and immorality always weigh heavily on her; her judgment is dis- torted ; everything urges her on to rebellion and hatred, and her sojourn in prison only aggravates this wicked disposition. Injustice displaced woman ; justice alone can give back to her the place to which she has a right. How many heartaches does one experience in visits to the prison | What souvenirs rest in the grave of memory ! One can not refrain from ardently desiring those reforms which shall give back to woman confidence in herself. Many poor creatures go out from prison only to return there very quickly, because they have no force to struggle for life and to provide for their needs. And the children, who are with their mothers, unmindful of that horrible place in which they are shut up, but which they will remember later if they live, for they are deformed, diseased, and death watches for them . The prison will kill them. They entered there in a dying condition, and the lack of pure air will accomplish their death. The Work of the Liberated of St. Lazare always interests itself in woman. It aids her during pregnancy; brings her help at the time of the birth of her baby; sustains the girl-mother; stands to her in the place of family; receives often the abandoned or maltreated child ; seeks honest employers where the little one may be placed in apprenticeship in order to give her means of living and to save her from passing through the prison as her mother has done; pays arrearages; gives little certificates of rent; reclaims articles from the pawnbroker; indemnifies employers in order to regain pos- session of the trunk which is the only fortune of a nurse who has been con- victed of her first larceny. The society seeks still (and it is one of its triumphs) to mollify the complainants; if the cause of complaint is slight it obtains a stay of proceedings and carries it to the judge, who yields and dismisses the unfortunate with an order of mo//e prosegui. By this means the first condemnation and its sad consequences are avoided. The society restores to their homes, whenever it is possible, the children who have left the paternal fireside. It brings back into favor the girl-mothers driven from the family, and causes the grandparents to adopt the infants. Read the reports of our society, which has been laboring regularly and progressing step by step for nineteen years. Come and pay a visit to Our bureau. You will go away convinced that the work of the Liberated of St. Lazare renders great services, that it merits sympathy and the encouragement - Philanthropies. 93 of all those who are interested in philanthropy, and that it is well worthy of a place in the A’evue du Progressive Mora/e. If man, after having committed a fault and having been punished for it, experiences, on his discharge from prison, great difficulty in regaining his place in society, the woman who finds herself in the same situation has such great impediments that it amounts almost to an impossibility for her to rise again. It seems that the world exacts from woman, although less pro- tected than man, perfect freedom from sin, and refuses to receive her again after a fall or an error. This one shocking iniquity is prevalent in nearly every country. In Paris, it is increased by the state of the prison of St. Lazare, the only one which receives women; gathers between the same walls young girls under paternal correction, the accused, the condemned and the prostitute. The result is that the public confounds the women who come from the St. Lazare with prostitutes, surrounds them with the same scorn, and finds in that a convenient excuse for refusing to aid them. The unhappy prisoners themselves feel so deeply the horror of this situation that they dread the prison less than the hour when they regain the liberty which will force them to face the general scorn and the difficulties of existence which they foresee to be insurmountable. It is the deep pity for the being who prefers perchance imprisonment to liberty, and even dreads the latter as a worse penance than the prison itself, which has given birth to the work of the Liberated of St. Lazare. To preserve the woman in danger of being lost, and furnish to the liberated, without distinction of religion or nation- ality, the means of rising again ; such is the programme of the work. The directress-general, to whom the administration has granted entrance into the prison, goes there once or several times every week. She sees the prisoners, encourages them, consoles them and informs herself as to their needs for the day of their discharge. One, coming from the country in order to go into service in the city, commits there some fault, and, wakened from her delusions, wishes to return to her family, who repulse her. The directress then writes to the parents in order to prevail on them to yield; to the pastor or the mayor, interceding for her profégé. They offer to pay for the guilty child, and success is often the result. Above all, they give clothes, destined to replace the prison garments in which the liberated would find herself at once repulsed. Sometimes a little money is given, as little as possible, the money of charity profiting rarely if one can not watch strictly over its manner of being spent. Generally, the directress can, it may be personally, it may be with the aid of the lady patronesses, take measures in time, Sö that the aid desired may be ready at the hour of dis- charge from the prison. It is important, in fact, not to leave the aban- doned ones to themselves a day, even an hour ; those unfortunates, who, robbed of their innocence, would be immediately a sure prey for which crime and debauch are watching. But, in spite of the good-will which is displayed 94 International Council of Women. there, it sometimes happens that one can not succeed in giving the promised aid until after the discharge from the prison. In order to remedy this grave inconvenience, Madame Bogelot, some years ago, prevailed on the Society to adopt a plan which she submitted to it, of creating for these special cases temporary asylums of a very simple kind. There were hired at Billancourt first one, then two, little pavilions, where, under the guardianship of a working woman, an honest housekeeper, there were received some of the discharged or their children into each asylum during the days of necessary delay. In that little retreat, modest and full of industry, often like the one which they had had and should have preserved, the liberated women live in a sort of moral convalescence, where their energy regains strength, an energy which has been depressed or which has disap- peared, it may be through their fault, it may be for lack of education or their Sojourn in prison. No rule of labor is imposed on the women; they are only asked to share in the household work until the day when, with the aid of the work, they shall be placed anew in employment corresponding with their capabilities. They find again in those kindly homes the necessary strength for taking up again the interrupted current of a regular and honest life. The work counts nearly twenty years of existence. It has already done much good, and can not fail to do more, when St. Lazare, being discon- tinued as the only prison for women, the great social iniquity shall have disappeared. St. Lazare having ceased (it is promised, at least) to receive the mixture of prostitutes and prisoners, in order to keep only prostitutes, the work which bears its name will be necessarily obliged to modify its title; but the need of giving aid to the liberated continuing, it will persevere under a new title in fulfilling, as in the past, the mission which has been self- appointed. If one considers the sum of money expended each year by the work, less than 15, ooo francs, it is astonishing that one can do so much with such fee- ble means. But let it not be forgotten that the object of the work is less to distribute charity than to seek, by counsel, by journeys, by personal exer- tions, to place the liberated women on the good road of honesty, work, and duty. In acting as it has done, the Association for the Liberated Women of St. Lazare considers that, in the limit of its means and in the specialty which it has chosen, it works not uselessly in the general cause of the rights of woman, and that it is in complete union of sentiment with all the members of the Council, who claim for woman, in the name of progress, of justice, and of humanity, the title of companion and equal of man. In closing, I thank you for your kind attention. I will not say good-bye to you. My country is very far from yours, but we will not forget each other. We have shared the same life and the same works, and our hand- claspings have confirmed the sentiments of our hearts. Philanthropies. 95 Mrs. SHATTUCK. The next phase of philanthropy is that of hospital work, and our representative here to-day who will speak on that subject is Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney, of Boston, the President and Delegate of the New England Hospital for Women and Children, whom I have now the great honor of introducing to you. HOSPITALS MANAGED BY AND FOR WOMEN. Mrs. CHENEY. In the whole department of education in its relation to practical industry, the most important point to be enforced is thorough train- ing with reference to the special work to be done. Women have been and still are placed at great disadvantage in this respect as compared with men, mainly from three causes. The first is the want of pecuniary means, which often renders it difficult or impossible for a woman to give years to unremuner- ative study. The second is the lack of a definite purpose in life, adopted at an early age and steadily pursued, which comes from the common Ameri- can idea that women should not look upon self-support as a natural duty. The third reason is that women are deluded, by the idea of some royal road to knowledge by a quick process of intuition, by which they may gain what others have won through slow, patient study. In the profession of medi- cine this last position is quite untenable. The experience of the last thirty years confirms this truth. * * * When Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell returned from Europe she saw the necessity of providing practical study for women. She appealed to friends for help, and was thus enabled to open a small dispensary. In 1852 a charter was obtained to establish “The New York Infirmary for Women and Children.” Dr. Emily Blackwell had already gone to Europe for her clinical study. In 1855 Dr. Marie E. Zakrzewska, who had had much hospital experience in her own city of Berlin, Germany, and had received her degree in Cleve- land, Ohio, joined the Doctors Blackwell in New York. The need of clini- cal instruction became constantly more evident as every year more women graduated from the two medical schools, and the magnificent hospitals of Philadelphia and Boston as well as of New York still refused them admission. Finding that a new impulse must be given to the work, the young German woman, Dr. Zakrzewska offered to visit the two cities having medical schools to plead for the completion of the education of medical graduates, and to ask for money to establish the hospital, for which a charter was already obtained. Boston was selected as the first place to visit, and thus began the work which I have the honor to represent to you. Dr. Zakrzewska pleaded the necessity of her work so strongly that the women of Boston became interested, and promised assistance so far as to subscribe, for three years, ‘half of the rent needed to hire a building in which the first hospital where women might practice their profession and teach it to others could be opened. In Philadelphia her pleading had a different effect. The enlight- 96 International Council of Women. ened friends who supported the Medical College for Women were convinced that if a hospital was needed for such purpose in New York it was equally needed in Philadelphia, and the government of the college at once began to agitate the subject of clinical instruction, although the hospital was not estab- lished until three years after the successful existence of the New York Infirmary. * * * But the value of the work was so fully understood by the friends of women's medical education that when Dr. Zakrzewska resigned her position as pro- fessor of obstetrics in the clinical department of one of the colleges, she was at once requested to join in establishing the New England Hospital for Women and Children, which was opened in June, 1862. The great pur- pose was to give to graduated women the chance of studying and practicing their profession, after acquiring theoretic knowledge, by giving them admis- sion to the hospitals as internes. Our hospital thus differs from those of the New York and Philadelphia Colleges in not being connected with any school, but receiving graduates of recognized colleges admitting women. * * * The trained nurse is recognized as the physician's needed helper. From the original object of educating women at once resulted the great charity of affording to women the professional care of their own sex. Num- bers of women have suffered for years from unwillingness to apply to men, and it is conclusively proved that confidence in the care of her own sex is confined to no class of women, but is shared alike by rich and poor, learned and ignorant, native and foreign. We have six or occasionally seven matrons connected with our hospital, four or five of them residing in the hospital and two or three in the dispen- sary building. They are all graduates of some recognized medical college, Philadelphia, New York, and Michigan University furnishing the largest number. We have received students from England and Scotland, and even one from India, a graduate of the Philadelphia college. One of the most important parts of hospital experience to the interne is the midwifery department, a branch of practice in which the fitness of women is most readily recognized. It is acknowledged that greater advantages of study can be given to women in these hospitals than are open even to men. in any other way. We recognize fully the rights of every human being, and are careful of the feelings of even the fallen women ; but, almost unconsci- ously to herself, she may be made the subject of Scientific observation and study, which is but a righteous return for the shelter, food, and care which is supplied to her. Dr. Zakrzewska says: “Remarkable success has been attained in the surgical department, which is of the utmost importance, especially in gynaecological cases. The greatest of abdomi- nal operations are now performed by one woman connected with the hospital, and the percentage of recovery is equal to that of other good hospitals here or in Europe.” Philanthropies. 97 I have a list of the following hospitals, similar to our own in aim and man- agement: New York Infirmary, 1857; Woman’s Hospital, Philadelphia; New England Hospital for Women and Children, Boston, 1862; Chicago Hospital for Women and Children : Pacific Dispensary and Hospital for Women and Children, San Francisco; Ohio Hospital, Cincinnati; North- western Hospital, Minneapolis. I think we can truly claim that all these institutions in our own country owe the inspiration of their establishment to the three pioneers of whom I have spoken. They are all conducted on sim- ilar plans, and have achieved similar results. The hospital in Chicago, like other prominent children of the East transplanted to the West, has out- grown its parents, and is now the largest institution of this kind in this coun- try, and probably in the world. It has eighty beds. While writing these notes a letter came to me from a city in Illinois, asking for advice and encouragement in starting a hospital in that place by the Woman’s Club, numbering eighty women. The Ohio Hospital for Women and Children, at Cincinnati, established in 1862, is still small, reporting only sixty patients in the year. Its managers are full of hope and courage. Its general management is similar to that of others I have named, but the treat- ment is exclusively homoeopathic. The Massachusetts Homoeopathic Hospital is connected with the Medical College of Boston University. The funds of the old Female Medical College of Boston were transferred to this school, and it admits women as students and professors. Its hospital is open to women as internes. The recognition of the need of clinical instruction for women has led to the establishment of similar hospitals in Great Britain. Dr. Sophia Jex Blake, who received her inspiration and desire to study medicine at the New England Hospital, from Dr. Lucy Sewall, whose student she became, states that clinical study is required in the University of London and the Royal Uni- versity of Ireland, the only general medical colleges yet open to women in Great Britain. This instruction is supplied by four hospitals in London, operated wholly or in part by medical women ; by one hospital and two dis- pensaries in Edinburgh, two hospitals in Birmingham, and one in Manches- ter. The female medical schools in each case have a hospital attached to the school. In Berlin, Germany, a dispensary and small hospital has been in operation for ten years, under the care of Dr. Franziska Tiburtius. But the work begun in our land has spread even more widely. Three hospitals are estab- lished in India : Kama Hospital, Bombay ; Lady Dufferin's Dispensary, Calcutta ; Maternity Hospital, at Lahore. Dr. Charlotte Ellaby, who, in conjunction with Dr. Edith Pechy, has been doing such excellent work at the Kama Hospital, has left for Hyderabad Sum, where the municipality is about to open a Woman's Dispensary. While I earnestly desire the opening of all medical colleges as of other 98 International Council of Women. educational institutions to both sexes, and hope that women will be admitted to share in the clinical advantages of large general hospitals, I yet believe that the smaller hospital, mainly officered by women, and specially for the treatment of women, and their clinical instruction of students, will yet for a long time, and perhaps always, be of great importance, and I certainly think that at present no single practical agency is doing more for the educa- tion, elevation and welfare of women. These hospitals also create and maintain an es/rif de corps among women in the profession, since all those connected with them continue to feel an interest in them and in each other, and thus the isolation of the practitioner is relieved, and the advancement of one is for the benefit of all. The next address was by Miss Harriet N. Morris, who is the delegate representing the public-school work of women. Her subject was MISSIONARY WORK. Miss MoRRIs. * * * Dr. Peabody, in an article in the Forum, entitled “Books which have Helped Me,” pays grateful tribute to Webster's old “Elementary Spelling-Book,” for having given to him in childhood that which had been to him of great value, in after-years, as a teacher and preacher—“No man can put off the law of God.” Again and again he had found himself expressing the thought in varied language, in his lessons with young men as well as in the more studied discourse of the pulpit. The old lexicographer might have arranged his “words of one syllable” in a vertical column—an arrangement most agreeable to some teachers—but the loss to Dr. Peabody and his pupils no one could measure. Man does not live by bread alone. Let me farther speak of the spelling-book as furnishing words which are seed-thoughts, or weapons, or torch-bearers—for they are any or all of these in the hands of the trained Christian teacher. The history of the little word idiot will serve the purpose to illustrate what I mean. As you know, it meant originally, among the Greeks, simply one who had no voice in the govern- ment. To-day such a definition would not be acceptable, since it would fire to resentment any chivalrous boy if applied to his mother. His mother is not the inferior of his father in his eyes | If the Greeks called one who could not vote an idiot, what should we call one who can vote and yet does not P Is a privilege ever a duty P Has one a right to ignore a duty P These questions pave the way for the study of the word scoundrel, which, the philologist tells us, meant originally simply one who absconds at muster- roll—one absent when he should have been present. Has any American citizen a right to abscond on election day ? Indifference is as unworthy as fear. In no unmistakable terms, God has given (Rev. III., 16) his estimate of the man who is lukewarm, caring not to take the trouble to show on which side he is to be found in the great battle Philanthropies. 99 between right and wrong. In the days of Homer, to be heroic was to be godlike, Kingsley tells us that “among the Homeric Greeks a hero or heroine was a man or woman who was like the gods [helpful], and who, from that likeness, stood superior to his or her fellow-creatures. They were sup- posed to be in some way or other partakers of the divine nature—akin to the gods. The hero, by virtue of his kindred with the gods, was always expected to be better than common men. He ought to have—to be true to his name of hero he must have—justice, self-restraint, and that highest form of modesty for which we have, alas ! no name in our English tongue—that perfect respect for the feelings of others which springs from perfect self- respect. If a kinsman of the gods, he must fight on their side against the side of all wrong.” I have shown, or rather suggested, some ways in which the study of words may serve our “mission high '' in the class-room. In this study of words there is the widest opportunity. Now and then comes the occasion for a rejuvenating laugh. An associate teacher came to my room one day with beaming face and said, “Here is something you will enjoy.” She had brought a boy's written work in spelling. The class had been given the word oblate to spell and define, after which it must be put into a sentence to show whether he had apprehended its “true meaning,” as Kingsley would say. In Wallace P 's book was found, “John was oblate on election day.” With soberest protest the boy maintained his position when questioned by his teacher. “Did not oblate mean ‘flattened at the poles P’’’ ‘‘Did not flattened at the poles mean knocked down on election day ?” Therefore “John ”—his John—“ was oblate on election day !” His logic was irresist- ible, and so was our laughter, and we count our vocabulary richer for this new rendering of an old word. In our eagerness for the mastery of the text-book we sometimes forget that this acquisition is only a means to an end ; that the real work of the teacher is to help the boy to become a manly man and the girl a womanly woman—not so eager to get gold as to know God and to serve him best through service to others. With this purpose planted in her heart, nothing will escape the quick eye of the alert teacher. The book, the periodical, the daily paper, the chat with a friend, the still, small voice within, the silent hour alone with nature—all are fruitful for her purpose. The teacher is a citizen-maker, and as such should have an interest in all the vital questions of the day. Such teaching is missionary work. It is not easy, but it is possible. Mrs. Browning sings: What are we sent to earth for ? Say, to toil; Nor seek to leave thy tending of the vines, For all the heat o' the day till it declines, And death’s mild curfew shall from Work assoil. God did anoint thee with his odorous oil, To Wrestle, not to reign; and he assigns All thy tears, like pure crystallines, 100 International Council of Women. For younger fellow-workers of the soil To wear for amulets. So others shall Take patience, labor, to their heart and hand, From thy hand, and thy heart, and thy brave cheer, And God’s grace fructify through thee to all. The least flower, with a brimming cup, may stand, And share its dew-drop with another near. Mrs. SHATTUCK. I have the pleasure of introducing Mrs. Amelia S. Quin- ton, Delegate and President of the Woman's National Indian Association. THE WORK AND OBJECTS OF THE WOMAN’s NATIONAL INDIAN ASSOCIATION. Mrs. QUINTON. Every society earnestly covets for its work a hearing in influential centers, and every organization represented on to-day’s programme is, therefore, to be congratulated. We are met under the auspices of a Soci- ety possessing great intellectual power and moral force, and with a wide and influential constituency throughout the country, and its motto, variously phrased, may be said to be “Break every evil yoke, set free the prisoners unjustly held, and direct to right ends their best abilities.” The members of this association have long and devotedly labored for legally-oppressed women. To these and to all in any way associated I plead for a race of native American women, who, whatever their ability, have no voice in the governments over them, and no legal control of their property and children. We of the white race have many and great privileges, many and great pro- tections, much light and generations of growth in culture and faith. Our Indian sisters, with few exceptions, have no protected rights to these, and their poverty and weakness should be our appeal for them, and command at least a share of our labors till they have what we possess. * * * When the work of the Women's National Indian Association opened, in the spring of 1879, it found many tribes still in utter savagery; as for example, the 6oo Hualapais of Arizona, who for six months at one time, it was officially reported, subsisted on grasshoppers and grass seeds, having only a sand-bar- ren for a reservation, no homes, no property, no clothing even, worth the mention ; it found the 5, ooo Apaches of that Territory warlike, revengeful, and often stung almost to madness by fraud, falsehood and famine. It found others, as the 17,ooo Navajos, a pastoral people, independent, Self- supporting, but with a wild, Arab sort of civilization; it found the Pueblo Indians in stone houses and with but a half Spanish civilization ; it found the red men of the plains nomad paupers and beggars; it found the tribes of the Pacific, Montana, and the great Northwest largely savage, though some had begun agriculture and other civilized pursuits; it found a few of the 40, ooo Sioux well advanced, and many others making a feeble beginning of civilization. The new work found all these, and others, possessed of all the usual human attributes and doing 'just as other races have done, and as our own race has done in like case, and in nowise worse than others in such cir- cumstances, and furnishing ample demonstration that men in all the tribes were ready to labor when assured of the products of their toil, the industrial statistics being favorable for those in their situation. * * * Philanthropies. 101 Thirty-three States are represented in the Association, and about one hun- dred societies in all have been organized. Great changes in popular senti- ment have followed, and, as always, the governmental policy has expressed these changes. All now concede that civilization, education, citizenship, and Christianity can alone solve the Indian problem, and that these are solv- ing it, there is overwhelming demonstration in all sections. And now let me include in one statement the objects of the work so briefly outlined in this paper. The Association proposes to labor unremittingly to secure the reign of law and the payment of our national debts to these natives, and the removal from the path of the Indian women the legal obsta- cles which prevent their fulfilling the responsibilities laid upon them by the Creator in his gifts consecrated to the utmost use of all their powers for themselves, for their children and their race. The obstacle of ignorance now barring their development must first of all be removed, and this means to every good woman in our land the duty of cancelling the obligations of centuries to these native peoples by sending to them able, patient and loving instructors of home duties and industries; by giving them Sanitary knowl- edge and the free use of books. The call, then, to the earnest women gathered here to-day is to share the vast practical labor imperatively and instantly needed among Indians, to help provide the means with which to do this work, and for volunteers to enter the waiting fields of heathenism, and darkness among our own native Americans. * * * For this work the Woman's National Indian Association implores the aid of all who are devoted to the emancipation of the race from any thraldom, social, civil or political, and to the elevation of women above all disabilities. Mrs. SHATTUCK. Before introducing Clara Barton, and at her request, we are to have a five minutes' talk from another lady, a representative of the Grand Army of the Republic, Mrs. E. Florence Barker. THE WOMAN'S RELIEF CORPS. Mrs. BARKER. Mrs. President and Ladies and Gentlemen: It is very embarrassing to me to appear before an audience on borrowed time, but I am fortunate in finding in this District of Columbia a woman who has time to let ; and this is because she is the busiest woman in the United States. The Relief Corps dates its birth from the hour the news flashed along the wires, “Fort Sumter fired upon ; our stars and stripes lowered; ” as with one great throb of the nation's heart every man, woman, and child sprang to arms to hurl back the foe we had nurtured at our very hearth- stones. Who of us will ever forget that Sabbath, July 21, 1861, when in silent New England the church bells called to prayer but also to work, the women of this land P Ere the setting of the sun supplies were forwarded to the hospitals? In 1878, Gen. Horace Binny Sargent, Commander Department of Massa- chusetts, was influenced by James F. Marsh, assistant-adjutant general of 102 International Council of Women. the department, who fully recognized the grand work accomplished by the women of Massachusetts, to issue a call for a convention. Securing the co- operation of the ladies of Fitchburg, Mass., an invitation was issued to every auxiliary in the State to be present at a convention to be held at the above- named place. There was organized the first department of the Woman’s Relief Corps, with Sarah E. Fuller, of Boston, the first president W. R. C. At the fifteenth encampment, held at Indianapolis, 1881, the following resolutions were reported by the committee and adopted : “ Resolved, That we approve of the project entertained of organizing a Woman’s National Relief Corps. “Resolved, That such Woman’s Relief Corps may use, under such title, the words ‘Auxiliary to the G. A. R.’ by special indorsement of the G. A. R.” During the annual convention (1883) of the Department of Massachusetts, W. R. C., Commander-in-Chief Paul Van Der Voort visited the convention, and in most emphatic terms indorsed the movement, complimenting the ladies of Massachusetts on having the most perfect work he had seen, and on their earnest endeavors for the soldier, assuring them that the ambition of his administration was that a national organization should be perfected. * * * In general orders he instructed all comrades to meet at Denver, Col., and form a national organization. In response to this invitation, extended to every auxiliary in the Union, as far as known, sixteen States were represented. After some preliminaries it was unanimously voted to organize as a Woman's National Relief Corps, and take up the work of Massachusetts. The objects for which we are organized nationally are— 1st. To specially aid and assist the Grand Army of the Republic and per- petuate the memory of their heroic dead. 2d. To assist such Union veterans as need our help and protection, and to extend needful aid to the widows and orphans of those who have fallen; to find them homes and employment, and assure them of sympathy and friends; to cherish and emulate the deeds of our army nurses and all loyal women who rendered loving service to their country in her hour of peril. 3d. To inculcate lessons of patriotism and love of country among our children and in the communities in which we live; to maintain true allegi- ance to the United States of America; to discountenance whatever weakens loyalty and to encourage the spread of universal liberty and equal rights to all. A communication was immediately sent to the National Encampment Grand Army of the Republic, informing it of the action taken. This resulted in the adoption of the following resolution : “That we cordially hail the organization of a National Relief Corps, and extend our greeting to its members. We return our warmest thanks to the loyal women of the land for their earnest support and encouragement, and bid them God-speed in their patriotic work.” ” * * Philanthropies. 103 Over one hundred thousand dollars have been expended in relief by the Woman's Relief Corps since the formation of the National order. About sixty thousand women have banded together for this special purpose, and obligated themselves to sustain the grand principles of fraternity, charity, and loyalty. There are 1,500 corps, representing twenty-five permanent and two provisional departments. Mrs. SHATTUCK. Miss Clara Barton will now speak. The flag of the Red Cross at the back of the platform introduces her to you. THE RED CROSS. MISS BARTON. The organization of the Red Cross is the result of an international treaty known among nations as the “Treaty of Geneva,” and has for its object the amelioration of the condition of that class of persons who, in accordance with the customs of mankind from the earliest history to the present, have been called to maintain the boundaries of nations and even national existence itself, by human warfare. Whether well or ill, needful or needless, that nations and boundaries be so preserved, is not a question for me here to consider. That they have been, and mainly are so preserved, that no better method is yet consummated, and that, in the progress of humanity, the existing countries of the civilized world have seen fit to enter into an International Treaty for the betterment of the conditions of those subjects or citizens, who, by their laws, are called to the performance of this duty, are facts which I am here to state. This International Treaty of 1864 commences with the neutralizing of all parties in their efforts at relief. It brings to the aid of the medical and hospital departments of armies the direct, organized, and protected help of the people. It goes through the entire category of military medical regime, as practiced up to its date; makes war upon and plucks out its old-time barbarities, its needless restrictions and cruelties, and, finally, in effect, ends by teaching war to make war, upon itself. - By its international code all military hospitals under its flag become neutral, and can be neither attacked nor captured. All sick and wounded within them remain unmolested. Surgeons, nurses, chaplains, attendants and all non-combatants at a field, wearing the accredited insignia of the Red Cross, are protected from capture. Badly wounded prisoners lying upon a captured field are delivered up to their own army, if desired. All supplies designed for the use of the sick or wounded of either army, and bearing the sign of the Red Cross, are protected and held sacred to their use. All convoys of wounded or prisoners in exchange are safely protected in transit, and, if attacked from ambush or otherwise harmed, an inter- national treaty is broken. All persons residing in the vicinity of a battle about to take place shall be notified by the generals commanding both armies, and full protection, with a guard, assured each house which shall 104 International Council of Women. open its doors to the care of the wounded from either army; thus each house becomes a furnished field hospital and its inmates nurses. Each nation upon its accession to the treaty establishes a national society or committee, through which it will act internationally in its various relations. This body corporate adopts a constitution, in the formation of which it seeks the best methods for serving humanity in general, together with the interests of its own people, in the direction of its legitimate efforts. With the exception of our own, no national constitution has covered more than the direct ground of the treaty, viz., the prevention and relief of suffer- ing from war. The framers of the National Constitution of the Red Cross of America foresaw that the great woes of its people would not be confined to human warfare; that the elements raging, unchained, would wage us wars and face us in battles; that as our vast territory became populated, and people, in the place of prairies and forests, should lie in their track, these natural agents might prove scarcely less destructive and more relentless than human enemies; that fire, flood, famine, pestilence, drought, earthquake and tornado would call for the prompt help of the people no less than war, and while organizing for the latter they included also the former. The rati- fying congress at Berne accepted us with that digression from the original purport of the treaty, and what we term the “civil branch '' of the Red Cross is known abroad as the “American Amendment.” With these explanations it remains only to name some of the things accom- plished and the changes which have taken place in consequence of this treaty during its life of a short quarter of a century. Previous to the war of the Crimea civil help for military necessities was unknown. Florence Nightin- gale trod a pathless field. In the wars which followed, till 1866, even this example was not heeded, and the wars of Napoleon III. in Northern Italy were types of military cruelty, medical insufficiency, and needless suffering which shocked the world. Out of the Smouldering ashes of these memories rose the clear, steady flame of the Red Cross; so bright and beautiful that it drew the gaze of all mankind; so broad that it reached the farthest bound of the horizon ; so peaceful, wise, harmless and fraternal that all nations and sects, the Christian and the Jew, the Protestant and the Catholic, the soldier and the philanthropist, the war-maker and the peace-maker, could meet in its softened rays, and, by its calm, holy light, reveal to each other their difficulties, compare their views, study methods of humanity, and, from time to time, learn from and teach to each other things better than they had known. Our own terrible war, which freed 4,000,000 slaves, had no ray of this fra- ternal light. The great commissions rose and performed a work of relief hitherto unknown, but from lack of military recognition their best efforts comparatively failed, and from lack of permanent organization their future possibilities were lost to the world. Philanthropies. 105 With the Franco-German war of 1870–71 commenced the opportunities for the practical application of the principles of the treaty. Both nations were in the compact. There was perfect accord between the military and the Red Cross Relief. There was neither medical nor hospital work save through and under the treaty of Geneva. The Red Cross brassard flashed on the arm of every agent of relief, from the medical director at the headquarters of the king to the little boy carrying water to his wounded lieutenant ; from the noble Empress Augusta and her court, and poor Eugenie, while she had one, to the patient, tired nurse in the lowliest hospital or tent by the wayside. No record of needless inhumanity or cruelty to wounded or sick stains the annals of that war. I walked its hospitals day and night. I served in its camps, and I marched with its men, and know whereof I speak. The German, the Frenchman, the Italian, the Arab, the Turco and the Zouave were gathered tenderly alike, and lay side by side in the Red Cross palace hospitals of Germany. The royal women, who to-day mourn their own dead, mourned then the dead of friend and foe. Since that day no war between nations within the treaty has taken place in which the Red Cross did not stand at its post at the field, and the gen- erous gifts of neutral nations have filled its hands. The treaty has brought the war-making powers to know each other. Four times it has called the heads of thirty to forty nations to meet through appointed delegates, and confer upon national neutrality and relief in war. It has created and established one common sign for all military medical relief the world over, and made all under that sign safe and sacred. It has established one military hospital flag for all nations. It has given to the people the recognized right to reach and succor their wounded at the field. It has rendered impossible any insufficiency of supplies, either medical or nutritive, for wounded or prisoners at any point which human sympathy and power can reach. It has given the best inventions known to science for the proper handling of mutilated persons, whether soldiers or civilians. The most approved portable hospitals in the world are those of the Red Cross. It has frowned upon all old-time modes of cruelty in destructive warfare; poisoned and explosive bullets are no longer popular. Antiseptic dressings and electric lights at battle-fields are established facts, and the ambulance and stretcher- bearers move in the rear ranks of every army. These isolated facts are only the mountain peaks which I point out to you. The great Alpine range of humanity and activity below can not be shown in fifteen minutes. So much for human warfare and the legitimate dispensation of the treaty. Touching our “American Amendment,” the wars of the elements have not left us quite at leisure. Under our constitution are formed “Associate Societies,” which aid directly in providing the relief which is dispensed. It being the rule to aid only in calamities so large or so severe as to require help from the general public, our societies are less frequently called to act. 8 106 International Council of Women. They are supposed to have reserved funds or material gathered and held for the purpose of supplying relief upon call from the National Association. The public, in general, to a large extent, is coming to the use of the Red Cross as a medium of conveyance and distribution for its contributions. The National Association, with its headquarters in this city, has a field- agent, who visits, in person, every scene where aid is rendered. Com- mencing with the “forest fires” of Michigan in 1881, there has fallen to its hands a share of the relief-work in the overflow of the Mississippi River in 1882 ; of the Ohio in 1883; of the Louisiana cyclone the same year; the overflow of both the Ohio and Mississippi in 1884; the representation of the United States Government at the International Conference of Geneva, Switzerland, in 1884; the exhibition of “woman’s work” in the Red Cross, both foreign and American, at the Exposition at New Orleans in 1885; the drought in Texas in 1886; the Charleston earthquake in 1886; the representation of the United States Government again at the court of their Royal Highnesses, the Grand Duke and Duchess of Baden, at Carlsruhe, Germany, in 1887, and the relief of the sufferers from the Mt. Vernon cyclone, from which the travel dust is still on our garments and our trunks are not yet unpacked. In the overflow of the rivers in 1884 the Government appropriated $150,- ooo for distribution through the War Department, and magnificently and faithfully was that distribution made—an honor to any nation. The Red Cross, with no appropriation and no treasury, received from its societies and the public, and personally distributed in the space of four months, money and material at a moderately estimated value of $175,- ooo-an honor to any people. It will, I trust, be borne in mind that this branch of relief work is not recognized by the treaty—that it is our own, the first publication of which, embodying the principles of the present constitution for the “relief of national calamities,” was issued in pamphlet form, entitled “The Red Cross—What It Is,” to the Congress of 1878, with the valued assistance of its efficient first secretary, Mrs. Hannah McL. Shephard, of this city. But, says one, what has this war movement, this Red Cross treaty, to do with real progress and the bringing about of that universal peace toward which our eyes and hearts and hopes are turned, and for which we have so long organized, labored, and prayed P. It has, my dear friends, the same, in effect, to do with these that suffrage would have to do with woman's position and advancement ; the same that prohibition would have to do with temperance. Wars are largely the result of unbridled passions. That universal treaty, binding every war-making power to wholesome restraints, pledging it to humanity, and holding it responsible to the entire world, is the bit in the mouth, the curb on the neck of the war horse, and while it holds out the measure of oats in the one hand it carries the bridle in the Philanthropies. 107 - other. It constitutes a peace society which can not be sneered at in counsel, nor ignored in war. It is one of the thresholds to the temple of peace, but even ourselves may be farther from the entrance than we are wont to fondly dream. Wars are organized mobs, they tell us. We are not without that seed in our own fair land to-day. But, again, what has the Red Cross to do with woman's work, and why does our Miss Anthony give it place here P Because her judgment is quick and sound, her vision clear and strong and she sees from afar. Miss Anthony was the first woman to lay her hand beside mine in the formation of a Red Cross Society in her native city of Rochester, and that society has stood like a rock through trouble and disaster, responsive to every call. Because there are more women than men in the Red Cross of Europe to-day. Empresses and queens lead its societies and its relief work in war, and while each queenly wife stands with her Red Cross hand on the epauletted shoulder of her war-meditating husband, he will consider well before he declares. This has been and will be again the case. Women have much to do with it, and in the great millennial day, when peace has conquered war, and its standards float out from the shining battlements, both women and the Red Cross will be there. Mrs. SHATTUCK. I have the pleasure of introducing Mrs. Emily S. Rich- ards, the delegate of the Women's Relief Associations for the Territory of Utah. - wOMEN'S RELIEF ASSOCIATIONS. Mrs. RICHARDs. The Women's Relief Society now existing in Utah, with branches in Idaho, Wyoming, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Col- orado, Europe, New Zealand, the Sandwich Islands and other places, was organized at Nauvoo, Ill., March 17, 1842. Its objects were the relief of the poor and afflicted, the instruction of its members in moral, philoso- phical and religious principles, and the maintenance of the rights of women in all departments of society. A president and two counselors, sustained by the votes of the members, are in charge of the whole so- ciety. A secretary and treasurer, also assistant and corresponding secre- taries are associated with them in the general management. Each branch is organized in a similar manner and has an independent existence, and yet all are associated under the general presidency. Utah is ecclesiastically divided into departments corresponding, usually, with the respective counties. Each organization of that kind is called a “Stake of Zion,” and each stake is sub- divided into wards, corresponding with the small towns or villages. Large towns are divided into a number of wards. Each ward has a relief society, with its president and two counselors, Secretary, and treasurer. These soci- eties are composed of women exclusively, who hold semi-monthly meetings and conduct their own business affairs. They deliver medical, historical, and scientific lectures and addresses on various subjects, do needle-work, 108 International Council of Women. make arrangements for visiting the sick and relieving the wants of the poor in their respective wards, collect funds, make reports, and keep full minutes of their doings and accounts of their finances. Teachers visit periodically the members at their homes. * * * - There are now four hundred relief societies in and out of Utah, with a total membership of 22, ooo. They own many of the halls in which they meet, and such property is valued at $95, ooo. They have laid up wheat in granaries to the amount of 32, ooo bushels, for seed or relief in case of scarc- ity. They assist in caring for the distressed, help to wait upon the sick, and prepare the deceased for burial. They have a biweekly paper called the Woman's Zxponent, with women as editors, writers, business agents and compositors. Its columns are devoted to any and every subject specially relating to women. The Deseret Hospital, with a lady M. D. as principal, and skilled nurses and attendants, is under their direction. They have fos- tered the silk industry, producing the raw material and manufacturing it into various articles. Some of the relief societies have stores for the sale of merchandise, particularly home manufactures, as they encourage industry as well as intellectual culture. The entire organization is a live, active, and growing institution, and its benefits are felt in every place where it extends, all its tendencies being to make women useful, progressive, independent and happy. The Young Ladies' Mutual Improvement Association is organized in a similar manner to the Women's Relief Society. It has a general presidency, with stake and ward organizations extending almost as far as the relief soci- eties. But it is composed of younger ladies, married and unmarried, who are associated for mutual benefit. They hold weekly meetings, managed by themselves, and have their stake and general conference, in which they vote for their own officers and attend to their own association business. They compose and read essays, edit their own manuscript papers, recite, sing, dis- cuss various subjects relating to women's duties, rights, privileges and respon- sibilities, hear medical and physiological lectures, and engage in religious services. At stated periods the Associations meet with the Young Men's Mutual Improvement Societies, which are organized in a similar manner. The organ of these young people is the Contributor. The motto of the magazine and of those it represents is, “The Glory of God is Intel- ligence.” There are 35o of these Young Ladies' Associations, with a mem- bership of 8,200. Their effects in promoting independent thought and awakening an interest in useful knowledge among the young people of the Territory are marked and of infinite value to society. The women of Utah have organized the children, apart from their day and Sunday-schools, into associations, which are called Primaries. Each ward association has officers similar to those of the other societies described, and also stake and general presidencies. The boys and girls who are enrolled Philanthropies. 109 - as members have their regular weekly meetings. They are taught to conduct meetings and speak in public. They are visited occasionally by the ladies of the older societies, but the organization is distinct from all others, and the ladies controlling it manage all its affairs. There are 360 primary associa- tions in Utah, with a membership of 25, ooo. Faith in God animates the women who work in these societies in all their exertions, which are entirely gratuitous. They are purely and truly labors of love. We desire the universal spread of truth and the diffusion of the Divine Spirit for the enlightenment, development and elevation of our sex, and the ultimate redemption of the whole human race. After the singing of the hymn, “The New America,” the meeting adjourned. TUESDAY, MARCH 27, 1888. EVENING SESSION. T E M P E R A N C E . Miss Anthony presiding. Invocation, Judith Ellen Foster. Miss ANTHON.Y. Miss Frances Willard needs no introduction to you. WOMAN IN TEMPERANCE. Miss WILLARD. Dear Friends: These kind sisters who made out the pro- gramme, in the first instance, gave me half an hour, but I had so many women of our own to present whom you have not heard that I subdivided the time, as I have spoken in Washington a great deal. I wanted the light to twinkle on you from many a star of the White-Ribboned host, so I will stop when my time is up. We are to think to-night about the temperance reform in its modern phases, for it has had many phases. I ask you to remember that while I might speak on another occasion about the temperance reform as such, I am bound...by the conditions of our programme to speak especially—and so are we allºto-night—of women and temperance. Of course I can tell best about what I know most of, and I know what the women have done, and what tem- perance has done for them. This work, in these fourteen years, has devel- oped the brain of woman as no schooling ever did before, has broadened the sympathy of her heart until it takes in all humanity, has educated her will until it has become a mighty power, and has exalted to Supreme heights her faith in God. The woman's temperance crusade had for its object the enthronement of Christ's spirit in the world, in its customs, its habits and its legislation. We have for one motto, “No sectarianism in religion.” We have for another, “No sectionalism in politics.” We have for a third, “No sex in citizenship,” and besides all these we have our grand, inclusive motto of the W. C. T. U., “For God and home and every land.” I have seen upon a platform that which, perhaps, is more remarkable than what you see upon this one. I have beheld a Jew and a Catholic minister seated side by side with a Methodist, Unitarian, Universalist and Baptist, all in the utmost harmony, all with the kindest good-will. And when I saw that I said, “God bless a cause which can bring those who differ so widely upon one platform to utter the one sacred thought of the fight for a clear brain and a steady-beating pulse, a protected home and a redeemed America.” Temperance. 111 Going to the South on five different trips, traveling and speaking in a hundred towns and cities, I have found that, although sectionalism may be a live issue to some, it is a dead lion to the White-Ribboners, and in its skeleton they have found the honeycomb of reconciliation and sisterly good- will. I believe that whatever may come out of this mighty conflict, in which woman and temperance are so largely synonymous, there is to come “no sex in citizenship.” I believe that we are to find that since the ballot is the emblem of power, since majorities must decide what the law shall be, we want woman as a voter and as a law-maker. Law depends on the decisions of majorities. Majorities of women are against the saloon. As you can not bring to bear the power of steam except through an engine, as you can not bring to bear the power of electricity except through a battery, so I believe you can not bring to bear the power of the home and church forces of this nation on the saloon except at the point where, by the correlation of governmental forces in a republic, public opinion and ballots decide candidates and officers, and you have enforce- ment as well as law. - You are told that public opinion seems to demand the saloon, and as a White-Ribboner I ask, “Whose public opinion ? That of the home P” “Oh, no ; the home is against it.” “Whose public opinion ? That of the church P” “Oh, no; two-thirds of the church is made up of women.” “Whose public opinion ?” That of men who drink and men who sell, and men in profes- sional, business and political life who don’t like to get the ill-will of those other classes. This is the outcome of deliberate choice, based upon motives wholly selfish. These men have saddled the liquor traffic on this nation. But the nation has great guns of power pointing sublimely up into vacancy. We want to bring them to the level of our use, and send their shot banging into the eyes of the foe. It is this purpose of arming woman with the ballot that makes me so perfectly at home on a platform like the present. It is this which brings me to do homage to those grand pioneers, just as you do, and no one can pay them too much gratitude and honor. N I remember at this hour the very first time I ever spoke in Rochester, in Corinthian Hall, in 1875. I then, for the first time, met Susan B. Anthony, at tea in the home of a mutual friend, and I learned, as everybody does who knows how true and loyal-hearted is that woman, to love and honor her. [Great applause..] I would be glad to have any amount of time taken up in demonstrations of that character. We had started to go into the hall from the ante-room, when Miss Anthony said to me: “I think I had better not go in with you ; you are just beginning; you have your reputation to make, and some people are afraid of the unpopular ideas I represent. I will go in by this side door, and they will never know that you were with me.” It touched my heart, her sisterly thought of me in my new position, and 112 International Council of Women. I was not then as thoroughly indoctrinated as I am now. I thought of it rejoicingly to-night, as I was to come forward under her auspices, with her benediction on my head ; how times had changed I thought how fitting it is that the forces of womanhood should unite themselves under the guiding Star of the woman’s ballot in the hands of these brave pioneers, and I believe the splendid marching army of the womanhood of the world shall thus go forth to conquer. Let us be grateful that our horizon is widening. We women have learned to reason from effect to cause. It is considered a fine sign of a thinker to be able to reason from cause to effect. But we, in fourteen years' march, have learned to go from the drunkard in the gutter, who was the object lesson we first saw, back to the children, as you will hear to-night ; back to the idea of pre- ventive, educational, evangelistic, social, and legal work for temperance; back to the basis of the saloon itself. We have found that the liquor traffic is joined hand in hand with the very sources of the National Government. And we have come to the place where we want prohibition, first, last, and all the time. We see that while the brewer talks about his “vested interests '' there are other vested interests. And I speak to you to-night, and these other women who follow me will speak, on behalf of vested interests, while we lend our voices to the motherhood of the nation that has gone down into the valley of unutterable pain and in the shadow of death, with the dews of eternity upon the mother's brow, given birth and being to the sons who are the ‘‘ vested interests '' of America's homes. We offset the demand of the brewer and distiller. that you shall protec, their ill-gotten gains, with the thought of these most sacred treasures, dear to the hearts that you, our brothers, honor; dear to the hearts that you love best. I bring to you this thought to-night, that you shall vote to represent us, and hasten the time when we can represent ourselves. I will not tax you longer, because so many are to follow me ; gracious and lovely women, who have given their lives in these last years to the spe- cialties of our work. You will hear from young women, you will hear from women in the plenitude of their strength ; you will learn how many-sided is the battle in the great society of forty different departments, officered by forty women in the nation, each with an auxiliary helper in each State, and that woman with a helper in each local union of the ten thousand unions. We have our work systematized and planned. We had to sharpen our weapons on the plain and in full sight of the enemy, but they are beginning now to come to a fine edge. We had to learn what not to do as well as what to do. We have learned by the logic of defeat and the argument of events, to come ourselves to that blessed thought of total abstinence as the cardinal doctrine of the whole movement and the natural corollary of prohibitory law. We honor Senator Blair, who has stood so true and loyal for this cause ; who has seen, as we have, that the ballot in the hands of women must be one Temperance. 113 of the weapons of this warfare; who has seen that we must have a national prohibitory amendment, so that we can ground our principles in the organic law of the highest legislature of the land; thus making the liquor traffic an Esau, an Ishmaelite and a social Pariah in this nation. We come bringing the most radical thoughts, because we have learned them from what we have suffered from fighting on the very border line of progress, on the very picket outpost of the army, not promising where we shall be to-morrow. We shall be where we are carried forward by the Spirit of Truth, which we invoke in steadfast faith and prayer that it may show us what is the truth of God. We welcome to our communion all good and earnest-hearted women. As Eliza- beth Barrett Browning said, you must pass along any truth, anything sacred, like bread at sacrament. I feel, as I think of the broadening, blessed work of this society, the truth of our Quaker poet Whittier's words: “Where'er amid the ages rise the altars of Self-sacrifice, Where love its arms hath opened wide and man for man hath freely died, I see the same white wings outspread that hovered o'er my Master's head.” Going outside our denominational boundaries meant going out on the great street, where we elbowed the multitude and where we found what an immense amount of good there was in other folks beside ourselves. For one it made me none the less loyal and tender toward my hearthstone and the church, and I believe that that has been the effect with all of us. I believe that we are going out into this work, being schooled and inspired for greater things than we have dreamed, and that the esprit de corps of women will prove the grandest sisterhood the world has ever known. As I have seen the love and kindness and good will of women who differed so widely from us politically and religiously, and yet have found away down in the depths of their hearts the utmost love and affection, I have said, what kind of a world will this be when all women are as fond of each other as we strong-minded women are P So, friends, as I think of the new America, the good time coming, when He who is the best friend that woman ever knew, the Christ of God, when He shall rule in our hearts and lives, not outwardly, but by His spirit— as I think of it all I say to myself, I am glad I am alive, I am glad I was not alive till this last part of the Nineteenth Century, I am glad I shall be alive when the golden hinges turn and roll wide open the door of the Twentieth Century that shall let the women in ; when this big-hearted brotherhood of broad-shouldered men who have made it possible for us to have such a Coun- cil as this, who listen to us and are more pleased with us than we are with our- selves—and that is saying a great deal—and who, if we write a book that is interesting, or a song, or make a speech, just say, “That is good ; go on, and do better next time; we will buy your books and listen to your speeches”— when these men shall see that it was not to the harm of the home, but for its good, that we were working for temperance and for the ballot. 114 International Council of Women. Home is the citadel of everything that is good and pure on earth; nothing must enter there to defile, neither anything which loveth or maketh a lie. And it shall be found that all society needed to make it altogether home- like was the home folks; that all government needed to make it altogether pure from the fumes of tobacco and the debasing effects of strong drink, was the home folks; that wherever you put a woman who has the atmosphere of home about her, she brings in the good time of pleasant and friendly rela- tionship and points with the finger of hope and the eye of faith always to something better—always it is better further on. As I look around and see the heavy cloud of apathy under which so many still are stifled, who take no interest in these things, I just think they do not half mean the hard words that they sometimes speak to us, or they wouldn't if they knew ; and, after awhile, they will have the same views I have, spell them with a capital V, and all be harmonious, like Barnum's Happy Family, a splendid menagerie of the whole human race—clear-eyed, kind and victorious ! Miss ANTHONy. I now present to you the delegate and American Secre- tary of the World's Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Hannah Whitall Smith, of Philadelphia. THE LATEST EVOLUTION OF THE W. C. T. U. Mrs. SMITH. While scientists are quarreling over the evolution of the past, the women of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union are trying to help on the evolution of the present. Every year, every month, every day almost, this great organization is evolving new ideas, new plans, and new strength. One of the latest and grandest of all its evolutions is the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union. This organization is intended to be a world-wide federation of all women interested in temperance or social purity or any other form of Christian, philanthropic, or reformatory work, without respect to nationality, class, or creed. Far-sighted philanthropists are looking toward a time in the distant future when the words of the poet shall be fulfilled, and “The war-drums throb no longer, and the battle-flags be furled In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the world.” The idea of this World’s Union of women first came to Miss Willard when working in California in 1883. Invisible cords seemed to draw her heart out toward the Sandwich Islands and Japan, and urgent representations were made to her of the blessings she might carry to these distant lands, and there opened out before her inward eye the vision of a White-Ribbon sisterhood, clasping hands the whole world round, and carrying everywhere its message of temperance, purity and peace. This vision began to be realized in 1884, when, at our annual convention, held in Detroit, Miss Willard, in her address, urged upon us the formation of a World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union. One courageous woman was found there who offered herself for a round-the-world organizing tour— Temperance. 115 Mary Clement Leavitt, of Boston; and when told that she would have to take all the financial risks upon herself, as there was no money provided, she bravely declared that she was not afraid to go out on faith. She has now been out four years and all her wants have been amply supplied. She has organized in the Sandwich Islands, New Zealand, Australia, Japan and China. She is now in India and expecting to go thence to Madagascar, Africa, Asia Minor, and wherever else she can find the smallest open door. Everywhere she has met with the most cordial reception, and has always left behind her a branch of our World's Union. I hold in my hand the third annual report of the Hawaiian Woman’s Chris- tian Temperance Union, and there I read that there are already thirty-two unions among the native women on the islands of Oahu, Mani, Molokai, and Hawaii. The “Health Primer,” prepared by Mary H. Hunt, of Bos- ton, has been translated and published in the Hawaiian language for use in the native schools. This is also being done in Japan, and other countries are in treaty with Mrs. Hunt in regard to it. Other organizers besides Mrs. Leavitt are now in the field. Madam Ander- son Meyerhelm, of Stockholm, is at work in Sweden, Norway, and Russia, and Miss Gray, of England, is working in Switzerland, Scotland, and Ger- many. Everywhere the deepest interest is manifested. The women of the world are waking from their sleep of ages and need only the helping hand of their more favored sisters to enable them to rise up and join the great army who are moving on to woman's peaceful emancipation and victories. In 1886 the British Woman's Temperance Association came into our fed- eration, and its president, Mrs. Margaret Bright Lucas, the sister of the famous John Bright, M. P., was made the President of the World's Union for the two years following. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union of the United States has proved, beyond the possibility of question, that the existence of a common organization, binding together a large extent of coun- try, is of great advantage in transmitting from one place to another sugges- tions for work, and help in carrying out these suggestions. It is obvious that a World's Woman’s Christian Temperance Union must necessarily mul- tiply this effectiveness in proportion to the extent of its organization. It will provide a world wide net-work by which temperance and social reformers of every nation may communicate with one another, and be enabled to help each other. - A petition has been prepared by the World’s Union that is to be translated into the language of every nation and circulated in every country, praying the men convened in all their great legislative assemblies and represented by their potentates for protection and deliverance for themselves and their chil- dren from the twin curses of the liquor traffic and the opium trade. This petition is to be signed by at least one million women, and, when finished, will be carried by a deputation to every government of the world in turn, 116 International Council of Women. beginning with our own Congress and the Dominion of Canada. Already thousands of signatures have been secured in many different countries. In Ceylon alone 16, ooo natives signed it in a few weeks. The World's Union will be also a great protective agency encircling the world for the saving of the boys and girls who are annually scattering them. selves over every quarter of the globe in search of work or of education. A very touching illustration of the value of this department is an incident which happened to Mrs. Mary B. Willard, in Chicago, a few years ago. A poor woman came to her one day in great distress over a wayward, runaway son, who had wandered to St. Louis and was, she had heard, ill in a den of infamy there. The mother was in despair. “What shall I do?” she cried. “I have no money to go to St. Louis myself, and I have no friends there. What shall I do?” “Oh,” replied Mrs. Willard, “it will be all right. I will write, if you like, to the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union there, and they will look up your boy.” The grateful mother accepted the offer, and the letter was sent that day. The Union in St. Louis were true to their mission, and the boy was rescued, and finally restored to his mother. When she came again to see Mrs. Willard, with tears of joy streaming from her eyes, she said: “Oh, Mrs. Willard, it seems to me that the Woman’s Chris- tian Temperance Union is like a million mothers all over the land.” And So it is. Some one has said that the Woman's Christian Temperance Union is only organized mother-love. If, then, not only the one million but the many millions of mother hearts all over the world can but be organized through this federation into a united band for saving the children, what mar. velous results we shall surely see It is also intended to make this World’s Union a means of influencing inter- national questions that affect social reforms between different countries. There is a work to be done in this direction in improving the extradition treaties as occasion arises, and in bringing pressure to bear against the forc- ing of stimulants and narcotics upon savage and semi-civilized communities. As the uncivilized portion of the world is at present in the course of being rapidly divided under the nominal sovereignty of the great powers, this is exactly the time when prompt action ought to be taken to force every govern- ment to protect these helpless people from the curse of the liquor traffic. I would say, in conclusion, that all women’s societies can freely come into this world-wide federation, for it is not intended that it shall control in any way the plans of any society, but that it shall simply unite them all into one common organization, for the better furtherance of the purpose that ani- mates each. Miss ANTHONy. Our next speaker comes from Canada, Mrs. Bessie Starr Keefer, delegate of the Toronto Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Mrs. KEEFER. I have heard a great deal since I came to Washington about every nation on the face of the globe, but nothing whatever concern- Temperance. 117 ing Canada, except a little bit about its codfish, and I am beginning to feel as though you imagine we are pretty small people across the line ; but we are not. I found that fifteen years ago there was no college here in the United States where I could get a university education, so I had to step across the line; and when I had been there for some time I decided to live across the line, and that is the way I came to be a Canadian. I am proud to be a Canadian when I begin to talk temperance, because we have in Canada more prohibi- tion, comparatively, than any other nation on the globe. True, we suffered a defeat not very long ago at the Halton election. I wonder if you know what we mean by the Halton election ? We Canadians some time ago had been petitioning the government, con- tinually troubling them, for a prohibitory law, and they said, we won't give you what you are asking for, but we will give you this Scott act, which you can take and see what you can do throughout your country, and if you can get a majority of the counties in the Dominion to carry the Scott act we will give you prohibition. That is the way the politicians talk. We are waiting for the promise to be fulfilled, for we carried the Scott act in five- ninths of the counties of the Dominion, and we carried it in some other of the counties, but still we didn’t get a prohibitory law. Every now and then the liquor party go to work and try to overset the Scott act, for that Canada temperance act allows that every three years a repeal vote can be tried. Year after year they have tried it with some of the counties, but this is the first time it has been successful. This time in Halton. When the act was passed six years ago, it was by a majority of only eighty. Three years later the liquor party attempted a repeal, and they brought their best men—with a note of interrogation after best—into the country; they brought them from the United States and England, and they spent an immense amount of money in Halton County, but we carried the Scott act; we carried the vote against repeal by a majority of an hundred and eighty. So this year they again demanded a repeal. They had learned some lessons; they did not import speakers, nor use any of the men we had in our own country; nor did they approve this time of public agitation, for they had learned that the more this matter was discussed the worse it was for them. So they worked in an underhand way, and we, somehow or other, have lost the Scott act in Halton County. Then the people all over the country talked as if we were defeated. I don’t know how the men felt ; they looked pretty blue after it. But we temperance women are made of india-rubber. So we don’t feel a bit discouraged, but are really beginning to think that that defeat of the Scott act was the very best thing that could occur in the Dominion of Canada, because I am afraid some of us were beginning to feel a little bit satisfied with the law. It was the best we had, but it was a very imperfect measure ; and now we shall agitate for something that means a good deal more. * * * - 118 . International Council of Women. When we demanded that the suffrage be extended to married women one of our members in the House rose and said: “We must look at that question from all sides to see just what those women mean.” The extension of the municipal suffrage, mind you; it wasn’t the political suffrage. “The exten- sion of the municipal suffrage means immediate prohibition.” And then, to my great astonishment, the grand, splendid temperance men of ours in the legislature voted against our measure and thus against immediate prohibition. >K >k >k Miss ANTHONY. I now present to you one of our youngest and most faith- ful girls, who is everything to Miss Willard and everything to the cause— Miss Anna Gordon. HOW TO REACH THE CHILDREN. Miss GORDON. The work of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union for the childhood of this nation is fourfold: (1.) Through the free kinder- gartens which our societies are establishing, where the child is so early guided into paths of pure living. (2.) Through the Sunday-schools of nearly all denominations, where young people are taught that this body is the “Temple of the Holy Ghost,” and poisons have no place there. (3.) Through scien- tific temperance teaching in the public schools. (4.) And, lastly, through the distinct juvenile organization which we call the Loyal Temperance Legion. - We can not be too thankful for the grand advance step in temperance legislation by which, in so many of our States and in all our Territories, we have laws requiring scientific temperance teaching in the public schools, and as this specific education is the first and main object of our juvenile temper- ance organization, we often hear the query, “Is not this public school teaching enough P” At first thought one might say that, in a community where the law is well enforced by a school board and teachers in thorough sympathy with it, the children might consider it an insult to their intelligence were they asked to organize a society wherein they could be taught the scientific basis for total abstinence, when they probably would know more about the poison, alcohol, and its physiological effects, than most of the grown people in the same locality. But we ought to band these children together to train them as temperance workers, that the principles taught in School may be wrought out in active service, and that the truths there learned may be supplemented by more elaborate illustration than the most faithful teacher will have time to undertake with a curriculum already crowded. In school the child is taught, but in our societies he must be trained, and we can not afford to let the chil- dren lose the benefit of associated work in a society of their own, which means as much in rallying children as older people. We who wear the White Ribbon are women of peace, but we believe in training the children to a warfare against sin and every bad habit, not only that “all things bright and good may seem their natural habitude,” but Temperance. 119 because of the beautiful, unconscious influence of the little child, which must be utilized for our cause. George Eliot says: “In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now, but yet men are led away from threatening destruction ; a hand is put into theirs which leads them forth gently toward a calm and bright land, so that they look no more back- ward ; and that hand may be a little child’s.” Miss ANTHON.Y. You will now listen to a woman who, at least thirty- five years ago, was speaking in behalf of the emancipation of four millions of slaves, Mrs. Frances Ellen Harper. THE NEGLECTED RICH. Mrs. HARPER. Society organizes its charities and corrections for its per- ishing and dangerous classes; builds prisons and reformatories and the gal- lows for one, and extends sheltering arms to the other. There is a fine sympathy among the American people to which we can readily appeal on occasions of widespread calamities; a sympathy which reached out its hands to Chicago when she sat down by the ashes of her conflagration, which has been more ready to give than even Boston may have been ready to receive ; a sympathy which extended itself to the Southwest when the yellow-fever was breathing its bane upon the morning air and distilling its poison on the midnight dews; but who thinks of feeling or caring for the neglected rich— the men with plethoric purses but attenuated souls, the moral cripples who tread on velvet carpets, who suffer from the most fatal of all neglects—self- neglect—a neglect which projects itself into the lives of others? No mother can waste her physical strength and dwarf her moral and spiritual capacities without entailing a reaction on the lives of her children. No man can make his heart a ledger and write upon it nothing but tax and loss and gain, average and barter, without cheating the world through what he withholds from it. The strength of a nation is not in the power of its armies, the strength of its plots, nor wealth of its coffers, but in the intelligence of its people, its happy homes, and well-trained and educated children. I do not stand here to make a tirade against wealth, nor to say that we have not among us men and women who hold wealth as a Sacred trust and regard themselves as stewards of God to make the world gladder by their presence and better through their influence. But the class to which I refer are the people who give to life false values and fictitious estimates ; the men who increase their possessions through wrong-doing, who uphold prosperous sins, and virtually say, “Let us make money, though we extract it from blood and tears.” Self-neglected men to-day sustain the liquor traffic, though it grinds out in our midst a fearful grist of misery, sin, and death. I hear the clink of the dollar and the plea of the shopkeeper, but above it all I hear the agonized cry of the drunkard's wife and the wail of his deserted children. * * * 120 International Council of Women. In the South men fettered the slave and cramped their own souls, denied him knowledge and darkened their own spiritual insight ; if heathenism judged aright that a degraded woman could not be the mother of a hero, what breadth of philanthropy could the child of the master learn from the lips of the slave? Selfishness, luxury, and idle ease are not bracing atmos- pheres in which to develop the manly virtues and Christian graces. Neither are homes of ignorance and poverty good schools for the development of all that is best in human nature. If neglect, ignorance, are fruitful sources of untold misery, then is it not an important question to ask what shall be done with the neglected rich who need truth more than flattery; the men who make corners in wheat and combinations in coal; who grind the faces of the poor by the depression of labor; who throw their lives between God’s sun- shine and the shivering poor P Let the home, the school, and the college combine to teach the young les- sons which they may bind as an amulet around their heads and throw as a bulwark around their lives. Let the young learn that all the great battles of . humanity are not yet fought out ; that if slavery was the enemy of one race we have another battle on hand with the enemy of every race under heaven, and that the world has need, now as then, of noble deeds and earnest men and women, tender, true, and strong to war with error, sin, and wrong. Let the press stand on the side of the home and the church of God, against the madness and folly of the rum traffic. And in conclusion let the pulpit teach the sacredness of man, the intrinsic dignity of the soul, its high ori- gin, its relationship to God, and that the weakest and poorest little one is linked to the throne of the Eternal by such strong but invisible ties that if you rudely jar them upon earth they will tremble around the throne; let it be impressed upon the conscience of the neglected rich that while men may boast of the aristocracy of wealth and talent, the aristocracy of the soul out- ranks all other. The truest science is that which leads to a truer life; the highest of arts is the art of building a good character. Miss ANTHON.Y. Our next speech will be from Mrs. Susan H. Barney, of Rhode Island, National Superintendent of the Prison, Jail, Police, and Alms- house Work of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. POLICE MATRONS. Mrs. BARNEY. It wasn’t strange that the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union should go into the dark places of the world, to the prisons and almshouses, where we find those who wander in strange paths. But at the very first ours was reform work, and we stood for two or three years upon the edge of the precipice trying to pull those back who were in danger and keep them from going over. But they have been worsted, they have been carried out of the police station, they have been carried out to the house of correction, but we have followed them. Then naturally our hearts turned to those unfortunate women, the great bond of sisterhood stretched Temperance. 121 out over these classes, and we came to realize that there was a serious gap between the work of prevention and the work of reformation. As we inves- tigated we found that women were arrested either on suspicion, or for slight misdemeanor or for crime, and were taken to the police station, searched if need be, and there were various reasons that led to this searching, such as stolen goods, or weapons, or liquor. They were searched by men, locked up in a cell—perhaps underground—and shut up there until the morning, when the policeman took them before the justice. What we ask, friends, is that in every city there shall be at one or more stations a woman with full police authority, into whose hands every woman arrested shall be given to be cared for ; that care to extend to the court, where the matron shall go, sit by her, and protect her until she is sentenced or re- leased. Of course we are told that none but strong men can manage these un- fortunates, but it would be well in the interests of good morals to give them the protection of a good woman’s presence; and it would be a protection for the police themselves from the foul charges often made and which doubtless are frequently untrue. A pure woman there could have an influence which would mean vastly more than men realize. I remember very well my experience in my own city. They said to us, “Well, if you could see one woman that comes in here three or four times a year, ‘Old Sal ('''—they told me it always took four policemen to bring her into the cell, and usually they got their faces scratched. One morning these policemen stood there radiant, saying: “We have got her here this morning, and we would like to see you bring her in ; if you can do that we will not oppose you any more.” The chief offered to send two men to take care of me. I said, “I don’t want them.” So they let me go alone. As I came to the cell I rapped with the key and opened the door, and there in the long, dark, narrow cell crouched the woman, looking more like a wild beast than a human being. She was just ready to spring, as she was expecting the policemen, and cried out, “Who are you?” “I am your friend.” “No, you are not ; I haven’t got any friends. I thought something was queer when somebody rapped at the door ; I never had that done in all the times I have been here before. Who are you, anyway; a policeman P” “No, I am a policewoman.” “Oh, I didn't know they had any such things.” I looked down into her eyes and called her by her last name with Mrs. before it. “Who told you that ; I have not heard it before for forty years.” I said: “You know you have got to go into a court in a minute and you are not fit to go,” and I began to smooth her hair. I took a pin out of my own hair; she hadn't a button or a pin or fastening of any kind to her clothes; she sat there tugging and holding them together, and as I tried to arrange her gar- ments she said: “Tell me what you're up to, tell me what you mean.” By and by, looking into her eyes, I said: “Do you remember the first time you were ever in a police station?” “Oh, God, don't I remember it !” “How 9 122 International Council of Women. old were you?” “I wasn’t sixteen.” “How old are you now?” “I am more than sixty.” “How many times have you been in these places P’’ ‘‘Oh, I don’t know; I guess God don’t know, it is so often.” “Look here, Sallie, if I had been there that first morning—do you remember how you felt?” “Ah, I was almost scared to death; I cried all night.” “Sallie, if I had been there then and had wiped the tears off your face, if I had put your hair up and put my hand on your shoulders as I have now, what would it have meant to you?” “Oh, I would never have got back again, but nobody ever cared.” “Now, let me tell you, Sallie, I want you to do something for me; I want to get a woman to go into these places to care for the women in the way I want to care for you; wouldn't you like to do it to help me?” “I would do anything I could to help you,” she said. “Now, the police- men say I can’t bring you into court this morning.” “They don't know what you can do.” “Will you go quietly with me?” “I will do anything you tell me to.” Then, after a minute, I said to her, “Sallie, do you remember your mother ?” “Oh, God, don’t talk about it ; she's dead long ago. I suppose she died before I was seven years old.” “Was she a good mother to you, Sallie?” “The best that a child ever had.” “Did she ever pray with you, Sallie P’’ ‘‘Oh, don’t ; you will kill me if you talk about it.” “Sallie, I am going to pray with you,” and with my hands upon the poor head I lifted up my voice to Him who is not willing that she should perish— that any should perish. Oh, how pleasant it seemed to us that morning ; it seemed to me that instead of my hands upon her tempted, tired head there were the hands that had the nail-prints in them. She said, “I feel like another woman.” “They are calling us now ; we must go. You will remember, now, what you have promised ?” “I will remember.” I said to her, “Shall you take my arm or shall I take yours ?” She looked me over and said, “Well, I am about three times as large as you ; I guess you'd better take mine.” So we went into the court. They said they would have cheered us if it had been proper. A policeman swore a round oath and said I had bewitched Sallie, but some one keener than the policeman said, “She’s got the touch of the Master.” ſ I would like to lay a little part of this burden upon every woman's heart. This Police Matron movement has passed beyond experiment. Commenced in 1877, in Portland, Maine, it has moved on until it is inaugurated in ten cities. In Massachusetts is our greatest success, where a bill has passed for the appointment of one or more matrons in all the larger cities. New York has a bill before the legislature which we are hopeful of having passed. Chicago inaugurated the movement by the Woman’s Christian Temper- ance Union placing matrons at the police station and donating the salary to the city, because the city couldn’t afford it. The first quarter, the matron at the Harrison-street station had fifteen hundred girls under her care; the next year the city adopted the movement, and now they have ten Temperance. 123 police matrons alternating day and night between five stations, and they have had eleven thousand women and girls under their care. While we were working it out in Philadelphia there were two births in two months in the police station, and only men present in that hour of woman’s direst need. Such things have not been uncommon. Philadelphia has just made appro- priations for two more matrons, and has reported nine thousand persons under their care, reaching all the way from three years of age upwards. This movement is in the interest of decency and humanity, and I hope every woman here, by her advocacy of it, will help to bring about the time when these women, some of them more sinned against than sinning, may have a door opened to them, and be brought to the touch of the Master's hand. Miss ANTHONy. One fact in regard to police matrons. In the District of Columbia a Suffrage Association Committee, of which Mrs. Jane H. Spofford is chairman, have had this matter for some time under considera- tion. Through Mrs. Spofford’s efforts a petition has been extensively circu- lated and signed by many of the leading men in Washington, and there is now pending in Congress a bill for the appointment of police matrons in this city. Dr. Mary Weeks Burnett, delegate of the National Temperance Hos- pital and Medical College Association, will now address you. THE NATIONAL TEMPERANCE HOSPITAL. Dr. BURNETT. The advancement of a nation depends largely upon the health of its people. Physicians are the recognized guardians of the public health, and nobly have they met the trust. The great aim of the physician and of all medicine should be to prevent disease and to restore the sick to health. The science of medicine is, however, so complex a study—it em- braces so wide a range of knowledge, there are so many problems yet unsolved—that some conditions of vital importance to the health of the people may, unless special thought is given to them, be in danger of being overlooked. Among these is the use of alcohol as medicine. Is alcohol necessary in medicine P There are no statistics to prove that alcohol can prevent disease or death. The highest judicial power in the land, the Supreme Court of the United States, in its recent decision based upon the Fourteenth Amendment, declares that “we can not shut out of view the fact, within the knowledge of all, that the public health, the public morals and the public safety may be endangered by the general use of intoxicating drinks.” It has been scientifically demonstrated that the effect of alcohol upon the nerve-centers is to narcotize or paralyze them. * * * It is to prove that alcohol is not needed in nor for medicine that the Na- tional Temperance Hospital and Medical College Association has been established, based upon the principle—the successful treatment of disease 124 International Council of Women. without alcohol. In this we do not claim originality, for one of like nature was established in England years ago, but we do urge upon your thought that there exists a great necessity for such an institution in our own country, which will make investigation into this subject, that we may demonstrate by facts which are accessible, voluminous and incontrovertible, that alcohol is not necessary in medical practice. The London Temperance Hospital has already arrested the attention of English scientists and concentrated their thoughts upon the subject. The reports of that hospital state that “an experience of fifteen years has justified the widest possible adoption of the principle—no alcohol in medicine.” But we need to investigate this question for ourselves. The climate of America, its form of government, its mixed population and its numberless race crossings, its exciting political and business life into which our people are drawn as into a maelstrom, all tend to make of us a peculiar and complex people, and to create conditions of weakness and disease which demand especial study as to their causes, the effect of narcotics upon them, and the surest methods of dealing with these causes and effects. Realizing the vital necessity for an object-lesson which should arrest the thought of American people upon this subject, a body of earnest, philan- thropic women determined to establish a National Temperance Hospital in Chicago, and, later, as soon as sufficient funds can be secured from friends of the principle, to build not only a hospital and training-school for nurses, but a medical college, where students shall have an opportunity to study and compare the success of these methods of treatment with those of other hospitals. The hospital and training-school for nurses were opened in Chicago two years ago. Our board of trustees is composed entirely of women; but in all of our branches of work outside of the board, men and women will work together. * * * Our largest gifts and donations to the present time have been from women—two having endowed perpetual beds at five thou- sand dollars each, and three others having given twenty-five hundred dollars each. In one respect we are international, for we have patients from all parts of the United States and from Canada. We have many more appli- cants than our present building will accommodate. We find that we must enlarge our work, and are planning to build as soon as the money can be secured. - Organized as we are for an especial purpose, we have a need of special rules for our government. The following is one of the articles of our con- stitution : All medicines used in the hospital must be prepared without alco- hol, and all physicians accepting positions on the medical staff must pledge themselves not to administer alcohol in any form to any patient in hospital or dispensary, nor to call in counsel any physician who will advise the use of alcohol. Temperance. 125 About seven hundred cases in all have been treated during the last two years. They are of both sexes, from all classes of people, and include all general conditions of disease, acute and chronic, whether requiring medical or surgical aid. We have as yet had no deaths. Our experience already proves that even in the most critical stages of shock and collapse our patients are better without alcohol than with it. Not only does the period of depres- sion seem to be safer, but we find that the reactionary fever is not so great, and that the vital forces can more fully assert themselves without the nar- cotizing influence of alcohol. An accurate record of cases and treatment is kept for future scientific reference. * * * Friends, the bed-rock of the temperance question is, No alcohol in medi- cine. It reaches into every home. It affects alike all classes of people and all parties. It is not a political question, but it is one that vitally affects the efforts of all philanthropists and statesmen. * * * Miss ANTHONy. I now introduce to you Matilda B. Carse, of Chicago, President of the Woman's Temperance Building Association. THE TEMPERANCE TEMPLE. Mrs. CARSE. Fourteen years have sped by since that noble band of women at Hillsboro’, Ohio, inaugurated the crusade against the saloon, the outcome of which has been the organization of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in every State and Territory in this country, and also in many lands beyond the sea. Our organization has no less than forty-three separate and distinct lines of work. From this you can judge we are laying broad and deep foundations. But to make it more effective, we must have money to push these different lines of work on to greater success. We need national headquarters worthy our grand constituency, which numbers 200,000 women, besides 200,ooo boys and girls in the Loyal Temperance Legions. The need of a national building and large income has impressed itself upon me with ever-growing power during the last five years. I have heard a voice, distinct and imperative : “Say to these women, “Arise and build I’” In obedience to the command, I have undertaken, with the co-operation of Miss Willard, and the assistance of the great temperance host, to erect a building in Chicago, to be known as the Temperance Temple. In pur- Suance of this long-contemplated plan, on the 13th of July, 1887, the Wo- man's Temperance Building Association was incorporated. Its purpose is to erect in Chicago a building as headquarters for the National Woman’s Chris- tian Temperance Union, with a capital stock of $500,ooo; shares, $1 oo each. When the stock is all sold $300,ooo worth of bonds, bearing 5 per cent. interest, will be issued. The local societies of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union are asked to give $500,ooo towards this enterprise. There are ten thousand local unions in the country. If but one-half of these give $1 oo each, we have the desired half-million, which is the amount of the capital stock. In 126 International Council of Women. order, however, to give the unions sufficient time to raise this sum, the stock will be sold to capitalists who are friendly to the cause, with the priv- ilege of buying it back again within five years, with the understanding, also, that the dividends are not to exceed 5 per cent. annually. It is hoped that at the end of five years the desired $500,ooo will be raised by the unions, with which the corporation will buy up the entire capital stock for the National Society. A most valuable lot, with a frontage on three streets, in the very finest busi- ness portion of the city, has been obtained. The lot is 166 feet long by 1oo feet deep. The only way it can be secured is by a lease-hold title. The lease, however, is perpetual, and the charge for ground rent, $35, ooo a year, can never be increased. It is proposed to erect upon this an edifice which will cost $800,ooo. It is to be a great office building, with the exception of rooms for national headqaurters and a hall which will hold about one thousand persons. It is to be twelve stories high. This building will bring in a rental amounting, at the lowest calculation, to $181,500 a year. With this money we propose to pay off the $300,ooo bonded debt. When the build- ing is clear of debt, the National Society, having free headquarters, will also receive half the income from the rentals. The other half will go to the States. The States will receive a pro rata of this dividend in proportion to the amount they have given toward the building fund. * * * The style of architecture chosen is the late Gothic of France. The enrich- ment is very largely concentrated about the main entrance, where it is intended to carve the coats-of-arms of all the various State organizations belonging to the National Union and the heraldic devices relating thereto. In the large tympana above the outer and inner entrance through the main doorway, the general coat-of-arms of the National Union and the name of the building are to be wrought in glass mosaics, which will be equally brilliant by night or day. * * * Two large fountains adorn the two corners on the main front. The tower is so large and important as to domi- nate the building, and also the entire city, and it is hoped that the Madonna and Child, which forms the finial, will indicate to all observers that the temple is not merely a commercial structure, but has for its object some- thing higher—the protection of home. A board of trustees has been secured, who are men of national celebrity. On the board of directors are four gentlemen, some of them being among the largest capitalists of Chicago. Miss Esther Pugh, our national treasurer, is the recipient daily of a continuous stream of small sums, varying from ten cents to one hundred dollars. Not only does this money come from all the States and Territories of our own land, but from all parts of the world; Europe, Japan, India, and the islands of the sea have contributed toward the fund. Everything in connection with this enterprise is progressing most Temperance. 127 satisfactorily. We expect to raise the entire amount of the capital stock this year. In May, 1889, we hope to lay the corner-stone of this woman's temple. Do you see anything prophetic in it P Will it not usher grandly in the twentieth century, which is destined to be the woman’s century, Žar excel- Zence 2 Oh, fair is the vision that greets me, As my eyes pierce futurity’s veil, Of a temple whose wonderful beauty Outrivals antiquity's tale. Its walls are of marble the whitest, Symbolic of purposes pure ; And the grandest of human endeavors In its massive proportions endure. Each statue so proudly uprising, Each beautiful fresco of art, Embodies a Sacrifice noble From many a womanly heart. America's women are praying Eor the day when their eyes shall behold The glorious Temperance Temple Its Wonderful beauty unfold. Miss ANTHONy. This to which you have just listened is not a dream, a mere speculation of a person who has had no financial experience whatever, but it is from the head and the pen of a woman who has made a great suc- cess financially in the management of a newspaper which indeed surpasses any woman’s enterprise ever known—the Union Signal, of Chicago. I now present to you Mary H. Hunt, the National Superintendent of Scientific In- truction of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. OUR REASONS. Mrs. HUNT. Tried by the canons of modern civilization the saloon is a nuisance, and why it can not be abated is a very serious question, and one we are trying to answer. But under our institutions one can not chase a thousand, nor two put ten thousand to flight in a fair count on election returns. We must have just one more vote for “no saloons'’ than “for saloons'' in order to get prohibition even nominally, and to get it really we must have a control- ling majority. We have tried this experiment in four States during the past year, and the saloon won every time. Why? Because there was a major- ity of men in those States that believed in drink, and they wanted it. And the papers said public opinion did not sustain prohibition in those States. What John thinks is private opinion, but what all the Johns think is public opinion. Now, if Mary could only have voted, if she could have been counted, it might have changed the returns. But they won’t count Mary; she is out, and so the question of shutting up the saloon is virtually a ques- tion of how soon can we convert these Johns to total abstinence, and, when they have once begun to drink, this is a very difficult thing to do. Our thought is turned toward that new half-million voters that come in every year, as the 128 International Council of Women. statistics show us, and we are saying that we will devote our attention to them, and if we can only win them we will very soon change the situation. Therefore we have organized in this country the Temperance Educational Movement. It is five years since the first temperance law was enacted in Vermont, and now thirty-four States and Territories in this country have provided for the temperance education of children. There are more than six and one-half millions of children in those States and Territories that are now taught that alcohol is a poison. They are being trained and drilled, and if you put your ear to the ground-path of history you will hear the coming of the army. There is buoyancy and elasticity in its tread. But there are some States—we call them the unpossessed lands—on the south of the Potomac, where it would not be of much use to get a temperance educational law. There are eighteen mil- lion children of school-age in this country, and for seven and a half million of these there are no schools, and, worse yet, no money in the locality to furnish them. There is a great impoverished territory, but these people are doing more for schools, in proportion to their property, than are some of us in the North. And yet a gentleman, the chairman of the committee of education in the Methodist Conference in Georgia, wrote me that the State provided for schools for only three months in the year, and two-thirds of that time they had hardly any schools at all, so imperfect are the accom- modations. And now you can see why I want the Blair Education Bill to pass. You can See how essential it is to the completion of our purpose and plan that the day should dawn when every child in this Republic shall be taught in the schools to abhor strong drink. That bill has passed the United States Senate three times. All the venom, all the misrepresentations, all the caricature that could be gathered up from the bottomless pit have been poured upon it, and still it lives. They say it is dead, but it is not; nothing can die that is essential to the preservation of a Republic like this. God never launched here the great experiment of self-government and then left it without His omnipotent power to support it. It is in God’s eternal purpose, and it is essen- tial for the bringing in of the day, as we have already said, when our children shall all know better than to drink and smoke as their fathers did. * * * The session closed with the singing of “Home, Sweet Home,” by the audience. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28, 1888. MoRNING SESSION. I N D U S T R I E S. Mrs. Laura M. Johns, President Kansas Equal Suffrage Association, presiding. Invocation, Rev. Annie H. Shaw. Mrs. Johns. Martin Luther's first-born daughter was dead, and he had entered the room where lay the beautiful mortal part of her, clothed for the tomb, and found there Catherine von Bora weeping Sorely over the bier. He said to her: “Sweetheart, why do you weep so bitterly? This is a hard world for girls.” And, truly, the history of the ages does not show us that life is a rose-lined pathway; neither is it flower-strewn when we are women. And the farther you glance down the long vista of the past the blacker does the record become. Few things more severely try my patience than to hear the lamentations of certain folk over the good old days that are gone—the days of our grandmothers—for surely it seems to me that human kind is steadily advancing to a higher and broader plane. Less than fifty years ago there were only four gainful avocations open to women compelled to earn their living—at the point of a needle, amid the whirl of factory machines, teaching little children A B C's, or doing housework. From those four avocations, only such a short time ago, women have now entered into hundreds of employments—many of them unusual— even Margaret Fuller's prophecy of the woman sea captain is now fulfilled. But with all these places open, the fact yet remains that women are receiving unequal wages for equal work. While there is any industry closed that they are fitted to enter, while the wages are less than those of men who do the same work and do no more and in no better fashion, our mission is not fulfilled and the heavenly vision is not materialized. In my own State, in progressive Kansas, we have not a few industries open to women, and they are building up fast, considering the youth of our State and the fact that women are in the minority. We have much sewing and pretty good wages for sewing women. We have much housework done at living rates. We have 5,300 teachers, and notwithstanding they receive smaller wages than the men, the difference is much less than between the average wages of the men and women in the older States. We have school suffrage in Kansas, women as members of school boards and as county superin- tendents, and many of the school-houses which dot our prairies were built by women's votes. Until recently only the women in the country and in the small villages had school Suffrage in my State; but by the enactment of the municipal Suffrage law, which lifted my Kansas sisters out of the ranks of 130 International Council of Women. idiots, the women in all the cities of our State are now in possession of the School suffrage, and the wages of teachers must come up. We have bee-keeping and a little silk-worm raising, but we do not hope to do much with them. We have many women practicing medicine; a woman easily builds up a practice there; the country is growing. This is an adver- tisement for Kansas, you see. There are five lawyers, and still more are studying with the intention of practicing. We have fifteen editors, and most of these are editors, publishers and proprietors, and are able to do any part of the business, from setting type to writing the brightest editorials of our day. We have many cashiers, and a great merchant told me recently that the women are monopolizing this position; they are making the best cash- iers in the world, because they are more accurate. This was very refreshing, as we have been wearied with the declaration that the feminine brain is so constructed that women can be nothing but inaccurate. Then we have farmers, Stenographers, type-writers, photographers, and real-estate agents. Our women succeed admirably in the real-estate business, but the main objection is in the fact that it requires a great deal of talking. I think I might class among the leading industries in our State the homestead of lands. Many of your New England schoolmarms are going West and tak- ing up lands; and the other industry is marrying. Marriage in Kansas pays better ultimately than it does in most States, because of the joint earnings of the joint corporation, woman is reasonably sure, under the law, of one- half after her husband has emigrated to that land to which earthly possessions are not checked through. Hopeful as is all this, our industrial opportunities are yet inadequate and considered unimportant. The report of our Commissioner of Labor Statistics appeared without a single word as to the conditions of our laboring women. A letter from this bureau just received, however, attests that a mighty correlation of forces is at work to achieve woman's industrial redemption. These gentlemen say that they are about to enter on the business of collecting statistics of Kansas women's industries. They say, “Our personal observation of the oppres- sion and discrimination, which working women are compelled to undergo, leads us to believe that our noblest and highest efforts can be devoted to no better purpose than to the enlightenment of the public upon the barbarism which clings to the treatment of the majority of our working women.” Victor Hugo says: “A day will come when the cannon ball will be ex- hibited and gazed upon with as great astonishment as is to-day the instrument of Inquisitorial torture.” Aye, and the day will come when we shall regard with equal surprise the fact that the women of the nineteenth century had only a menial place in the industrial world, and received the smallest wages for their work. We believe that the industrial advance and the financial independence of a woman, married or single, will furnish the solution to many social problems. The gravity of this question makes it a fitting subject for discussion in this great Council. Industries. 131 I now have the honor to introduce to you Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, whose name and fame are so well known to you that she needs no word of introduction at my hands. INDUSTRIAL GAINS OF WOMEN DURING THE LAST HALF-CENTURY. Mrs. LIVERMORE. Our social structure has been based on the theory that “all men support all women,” a theory which has never been true, and which is farther from being true to-day than ever before. Consequently, boys have been educated to have some clear-cut, well-defined purpose in life. The whole world of culture, work, and business has been open to them. It is regarded as a misfortune when a boy grows to manhood content to live on the labor of others. With girls it has been otherwise. It has been assumed that they would marry and be “supported ” by competent husbands. The only training necessary for them with this inevitable future before them should be such as would fit them to be wives, mothers, and housekeepers— “sweet dependents,” held perpetually in “soft subjection.” The practical working of this theory has weighted women with heavy disabilities, for many men make neither good nor competent husbands. Many are incompetent, others are invalids, some are dissolute and idle, and not a few are profligate and entirely desert both wives and children. Many women who have hus- bands find themselves compelled to aid in earning the means of living ; many wives earn the entire livelihood of the whole family, the husband included. Many women are widows, while an increasingly large number in the Eastern and Middle States do not marry at all. By the United States census of 1880, in the States of Alabama, Connect- icut, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia—sixteen in all—women outnumber men. This list includes the two largest States of the Union and it comprises all of the original thirteen, except Delaware. In Massachusetts women outnumber men by 70,000. If our present type of civilization remains unchanged, the newer States will exhibit the same excess of women in their population in the near or remote future. There are born into the world on the average, taking one year with another, Iof boys to every Ioo girls, as if nature designed to maintain the equilibrium of the sexes, and so guard society from demoralization. But the desolating wars of the world, drunk- enness, and other ruinous excesses peculiar to men, and, at the present day the waste of lives consequent on the reckless and absorbing rush of men into dangerous businesses in pursuit of wealth, are responsible for the fact that in old and long-established communities women outnumber and outlive men. It is evident, therefore, that a large number of women, millions, the world over, have not married, because there are not men enough to marry them, and that they must do their 'share of the world's work and in some way achieve their own bread-winning. If untaught in any remunerative industry, lack- 132 International Council of Women. ing in practical knowledge, and untrained in the forms of business, they must suffer great hardships. If property comes to their possession, their ignorance of affairs will make them an easy prey to the dishonest and designing. The old-time theory that “all men support all women’’ led to the enact- ment of laws which gave all the earnings of the married woman to her hus- hand ; in most instances gave him control of her property, always legal pos- session of her person, and legal ownership of her minor children; the right to decide the location of their joint domicile; the power, in short, to become the arbiter of her fate ; while the husband, in return for the service rendered him by the wife, was to give her such shelter, food, and clothing as was com- patible with his means, or inclination. While the woman remained unmar- ried and a minor, all her earnings belonged to her father, who did not hesi- tate to demand and retain them. Usually, if she remained unmarried through life, she continued to share the labors of her father's household without other compensation than shelter, food, and clothing, as in the days of her minority, sometimes receiving a meager stipend from her father's estate when he died. Generally, however, the property of the father was left to the sons, with the exception of the mother's right of dower, and the mother and sisters became then the dependents of sons and brothers, as they had formerly been of the father and husband. In some sections of the country this unjust and iniqui- tous condition of things remains still unchanged. When the early Woman Suffragists took their stand for a redress of the wrongs of women, they used no vague or ambiguous language. As early as 1838 Angelina Grimke and Abby Kelly, who were the first women orators I ever heard, uttered their protest against the wrongs of woman, from an anti- slavery platform. They severely denounced the custom of society which closed the doors of remunerative industries against women, and thereby con- demned large numbers to abject dependence and compulsory poverty. Ten years later, when the first Convention was held at Seneca Falls, New York, an occasion commemorated by this week's International Conference, women reiterated the protest and the denunciation, and demanded political equality as a remedy for these wrongs. Two years later another Woman’s Convention was held in Worcester, Mass., and again there rang out the demand for equal political rights for men and women, equal educational opportunities, and “partnership in the labors and gains, risks and remuner- ations, of productive industry.” It is impossible to-day to describe the fierce outburst of ridicule with which the public received these demands. Press and pulpit, legislatures and courts, public men and private citizens, society and fashion, all hastened to wash their hands of these innovators, and to label them with the opprobrious epithets so lavishly affixed to those who inau- gurate a reform. A dozen years were spent in this severe pioneer work, and then came the four years civil war. All reformatory work was temporarily Industries. 133 suspended, for the nation then passed through a crucial experience, and the issue of the fratricidal conflict was national life or death. The transition of the country from peace to the tumult of war was appall- ing and swift, but the regeneration of its women kept pace with it. They lopped off superfluities, retrenched in expenditures, became deaf to the calls of pleasure, and heeded not the mandates of fashion. Their work was that of relief and philanthropy, and for the first time in the history of the world the women of America developed a heavenly side to war. They cared for the needy families of soldiers, nursed the sick in camp and the wounded in hospitals, ministered to the dying in the rear of battle-fields, and kept full to overflowing the channels of beneficence which extended from Northern homes to the army at the front. For their multiform work they needed immense sums of money, and now the latent business abilities of women began to show themselves. * They came to Washington and competed with men for Government con- tracts for the manufacture of army clothing, and obtained them. When their accounts and their work were rigorously inspected by the War Depart- ment they received commendation and not a word of criticism, and were awarded larger contracts. They planned great money-making enterprises, whose vastness of conception and good business management yielded millions of dollars to be expended in the interest of sick and wounded soldiers. The last two of the colossal sanitary fairs held in New York and Philadelphia yielded, respectively, one million dollars and one million two hundred thousand dollars. Women were the inspiration, the creators, the great energizing force of these immense fairs, and also from first to last of the sanitary com- mission. Said Dr. Bellows: “ There was nothing wanting in the plans of the women of the commission that business men commonly think peculiar to their own methods.” Men awoke to the consciousness that there were in women possibilities and potencies of which they had never dreamed. Clara Barton, doing clerical work in a department of the Government and declining to receive compensation therefor, attracted no attention. But Clara Barton in hospitals and on hospital transports, bringing order out of chaos, hope out of despair, and holding death in abeyance; Clara Barton at Andersonville, where 13, ooo soldiers had yielded up life under the prolonged horrors of a military prison, and had been ignominiously buried in long trenches, uncared for, unnoted and unknown, attracted the attention and aroused the gratitude of the nation. For she ordered the trenches opened, the unknown dead exhumed and decently buried, each man in a separate grave, with a headstone recording his name, his rank, and the date of his death. Anna Dickinson, in the Philadelphia Mint, working for a pittance and making impassioned speeches on various occasions for the enslaved black man, was regarded as a nuisance. But Anna Dickinson on the platform, 134 International Council of Women. with impassioned speech and fervid moral earnestness, pleading the cause of the slave and receiving $1 oo and $200 a night for the service; Anna Dick- inson in the Connecticut and New Hampshire Republican campaigns, thrill- ing both States with her eloquent utterances, the acknowledged power that won the victory in both for the Republican party, became the heroine of the hour, and was hailed as the Joan d'Arc of the nineteenth century. The development of those years and the impetus given to women by the swift logic of events, which has not yet spent itself, has been wonderfully manifested. Since the great quickening in 1861 women have organized mis- sionary, philanthropic, temperance, educational, and political associations on a scale of vast magnitude. Without much blowing of trumpets or un- seemly boasting they have overcome almost insuperable obstacles, have brought business abilities to the management of their affairs, and have achieved phenomenal success. Their capacity for public affairs receives large recog- nition at the present time, and they are elected or appointed to such offices as those of county clerk, register of deeds, pension agent, prison commis- sioner, State librarian, overseer of the poor, school superintendent and supervisor. They serve as executors and administrators of estates, trustees and guardians of property, trusts, and children, engrossing-clerks of State legislatures, superintendents of women's State prisons, college presidents and professors, members of boards of State charities, lunacy, and correction, police matrons, and post-mistresses. They are accountants, pharmacists, cashiers, telegraphers, Stenographers, type - writers, chemists, dentists, book-keepers, authors, journalists, painters, architects, and Sculptors. And the last statue of Anne Whitney, unveiled in Boston a few months ago, the ideal statue of the Norseman Leif, the son of Eric, is regarded by many competent critics as the most exquisite work of art that has come from the studio of any American sculptor. In many of these positions women serve with men, who graciously acknowledge the practical wisdom that they bring to their duties. “And although many women have been appointed to posi- tions in departments of Government, and to important employments and trusts,” said Senator Blair, of New Hampshire, from his seat in Con- gress, “as far as your committee are aware, no charge of incompetence or malfeasance in office has ever been sustained against a woman.” With the progress of the modern industrial system there appears to be no limit to the opportunities of women. Only a little over a quarter of a cen- tury ago women were allowed to enter very few remunerative occupations. In 1840, when Harriet Martineau visited this country to study its insti- tutions, that she might be able to forecast the type of civilization to be evolved from them, she especially investigated the position of women in the young republic. She was surprised to find them occupying a very sub- ordinate position in a country calling itself free, and to find they had entered only seven paying occupations. They were allowed to teach, to be - º Industries. 135 seamstresses, which included tailoring, dress-making, and millinery; they could keep boarding-houses, enter domestic service, become operatives in factories, compositors in printing offices, and folders and stitchers in book- binderies. The last United States census gives the names of nearly three hundred employments in which women are working. The women of the State of Massachusetts are working in 284 occupations, and 251, 158 are earning their living in them, receiving for their labor annually from $150 to $3,000. This computation does not include amateurs, nor mothers and daughters in the household, and excludes domestic service. So important a class are the working women of Boston that Hon. Carroll D. Wright, Chief of the Massachusetts and of the National Bureau of Sta- tistics of Labor, devoted 134 pages of his Fifteenth Annual Massachusetts Report, published in 1884, to a consideration of the 20, ooo women of the city employed in occupations other than domestic service. He instituted a most thorough and searching investigation to ascertain their normal, sanitary, physical, and economical condition. Taking an average thousand of these workers as a number amply sufficient for the scientific purposes of the inves- tigation, he learned their personal histories, and from these deduced tabulated statements of great value, which startled the whole community. For he proved to us by figures, which are said not to lie, that “the average yearly income of the working woman of Boston from all sources is $269.07, and that her average yearly expenses for positive needs are $261.30, leaving but $7.77 on the average as a margin for occasions of illness, religious purposes, books, amusements, etc.” In his summary of facts Mr. Wright assures us that “the working girls of Boston are, as a class, industrious and virtuous; that they are making a heroic struggle against many obstacles and in the face of peculiar temptations to maintain reputable lives, and are entitled to the aid, sympathy, and respect of all who love good order, honest lives, and industrious habits.” I have no doubt a similar investigation into the lives of the working women of other cities would reveal a similar condition of things. It is the popular belief that women have hardly entered the field of inven- tion. In a late magazine article written by one of the ablest and noblest women the statement was made that “only 334 patents had ever been issued to women, and these were mostly for articles of household use.” But Mr. R. C. Gill, who has been in charge of the model hall in the Patent Office since 1871, has made a record of female inventors who have obtained letters patent from the United States. The record is complete to December 14, 1886, up to which date “women had taken out patents for 1,935 inventions, six times the number usually quoted.” Mr. Gill’s record shows that “there is no branch of industry in which woman has not left proof of her mechanical skill.” The first patent granted by the United States for a submarine telescope was issued to a woman in 1845. Women have received letters patent for fire- escapes, a life-preserver skirt, life-boats, and life-rafts, and for improvements 136 International Council of Women. in boot and shoe making. They have patented machines for “driving bar- rel-hoops, a steam-generator, a baling-press, a steam and fume box, an auto- matic floor for elevator shafts, a rail for street railways, an electrical illumi- nating apparatus, a railway-car safety apparatus, packing for piston rods, car coupling, electric battery, improvement in locomotive wheels, materials for packing journals and bearings, machine for drilling gun-stocks, a stock car, an apparatus for destroying vegetation on railways, another for removing Snow from the tracks, a non-inductive electric cable, an apparatus for rais- ing sunken vessels, a dredging machine, a method of constructing screw propellers, improvements in locomotive and other chimneys, a railway tie, a covering for the slot of elevated railways, and a device for deadening the sound on elevated railways.” The farmers, of whom there are many, have taken out patents for a grain elevator, several varieties of fences (one of them a flood-fence), a grain and cockle separator, a grain and malt drier, a reaping and mowing machine, a mode of protecting fruit trees from curculio, several improvements for harness, wagons, and carriages, a cotton picker, cow-milkers, detachable spouts for milk-pails, butter-tubs, churns, bee-hives, a machine for manufacturing honey-comb foundations, a bee-feeding device, and many more of a similar nature. In 1879 Harriet Hosmer, the dis- tinguished sculptor, patented a method of making artificial marble. In the higher civilization, which is our ideal, and of which we dream, every man who chooses will have a wife, and every woman a husband. The husband will be the bread-winner and the wife the bread-maker—the artist in the shaping and rearing of well-born children. Then will human father- hood and motherhood take on something of the tenderness, fullness, and divineness of Godhead, and then will “statelier Eden come again to man.” The civilized nations of the world are entering an age of industrial con- flict, where the struggle for national supremacy will be as hotly contested as it has been on any of the battle-fields of history. “The epic poem of the future,” says Carlyle, “shall not begin like that of Virgil, ‘Arms and the man I sing,' but ‘Tools and the man (and woman) I sing.’” Soldiers are, to be sure, still drilled in the camps, but children and youth are also being trained in industrial art in schools of design and normal art Schools, and in industrial drawing in the public schools. The days of chivalry are over, with its tilts and tournaments, but the working world arranges the tourna- ments of to-day, and summons the competing peoples to bring together the results of their skilled workmen and women, now to an exposition in Lon- don and then in Vienna, now in Philadelphia and then in Paris. The ancient commercial dimensions of the earth are swept away forever, and competition is now world-wide. This will compel the thorough train- ing of American working people in industrial education, based on art and science. We need technical schools as we find them in the Old World, abundant and open alike to old and young, rich and poor, and as free to Industries. 137 women as to men. They should be supplemented by museums of a high order, which will raise the standard of taste and stimulate to higher attain- ments. “Never will women have social equity till they have legal equal- ity,” said the good and just Canon Kingsley, a truth as fundamental as that which underlies the Golden Rule. Therefore, to working women, as indeed to all women, the ballot is a necessity. It is the only synonym of legal equality that a republican government can know. Above all, at the present time, should women cultivate what they griev- ously lack, a fine es/rif de corps. They should stand together in a solidarity that can not be shaken by difference of opinion, nor weakened by jealousy, nor undermined by the cruel gossip and scandal of the world. “Any stone is good enough to throw at a dog,” says Frances Power Cobbe, “and there is yet a spirit in the world that regards any slur, inuendo, or hint of base- ness as legitimate if uttered concerning a woman.” “The woman Thou gavest me, she gave me of the tree and I did eat,” is still the pitiful plea of the shirk and the coward. It should not be echoed by women, nor exalted by them to the dignity of an accusation. I lack language in which to express my sense of reprobation of the course pursued by those women who, from their soft and easy homes, where they are anchored in the love of manly husbands, enter the arena of public life only to beat back their sisters who seek larger opportunities than suffice for themselves; who make their own opinions and wishes the measure of all women's needs, and cry out to legis- latures and courts, parliaments and congresses: “Hold, enough Concede to women no more of their demands, for we have all the rights we want l’’ “Whene'er a wrong is done To the humblest and the weakest 'neath the all-beholding Sun, That wrong is also done to us, and they are slaves most base, Whose love of right is for themselves, and not for all the race.” The Chairman, Mrs. Johns. We have with us one who will tell us what has been done in the Grange for equal suffrage in the government of this organization—Anna M. Worden, Worthy Master of Vineland Grange, No. II, who will now address you. WOMEN IN THE GRANGE. ANNA M. WoRDEN. After the addresses listened to from this platform perhaps you will consider the paper I present this morning a mere bundle of commonplaces, but the lives of working people are largely made up of com- monplaces, and as I represent a class of women hitherto looked upon as the most obscure, you will pardon me, for, if I speak of women in the Grange, I must refer to women on the farm. The limit of this paper will not permit a history of the Grange, nor is it needful, since you must know that it is the farmer's secret order, organized as Patrons of Husbandry for purposes of mutual defense and protection. It has been styled the farmer's war upon monopoly, but it is more than that, it is the farmer's hunger after a higher life, an awakened longing for the 10 138 International Council of Women. refinements and opportunities that invariably follow justly compensated labor. True, it is an outgrowth of the farmer's general movement against the extortionate actions of transportation companies and the greed of middle men who robbed him in every market. E. W. Martin, the his- torian of the movement, says in his preface: “It has long been evident to earnest thinkers that the farmers of the United States are the most cruelly oppressed class of our community, and yet they are more than fifty per cent. of the whole population. More than that, agriculture is the life of the world, because it produces the food. Destroy it, and commerce, trade, manufactures, art, science, and our religion must languish and die. The farmer's hand may be hard and brown, but it ‘holds the bread,” and there- fore the cause of the farmer is the cause of the whole people.” Recognizing the fact that financial prosperity is the basis of all prosperity, this compact of the farmers nevertheless puts the higher law of moral and intellectual progress in advance. In the declaration of purposes the first proposition is, “United by the strong and faithful tie of agriculture, we mutually resolve to labor for the good of our order, our country and man- kind.” Their motto is: “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.” “We shall endeavor to develop a higher and better manhood and womanhood among ourselves; to enhance the com- forts and attractions of our homes, and strengthen our attachments to our pursuits; to foster mutual understanding and co-operation ; to maintain inviolate our laws; to systematize our work; to discountenance the credit system, the mortgage system, the fashion system, and any other system tend- ing to prodigality and bankruptcy.” Education, economy in expenditure, respect for differing opinions, equality, equity, and fairness, protection for the weak, restraint upon the strong, justly distributed burdens, and justly distributed power, are all touched upon in this “declaration of purposes,” which deserves to rank with that other declaration, in which men pledged their “lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.” Into this order, which “wages no aggressive warfare with any other inter- est,” asking only its just rights, was woman admitted to full membership ; indeed, she was welcomed, for, says the historian, “every husband and brother knows that where he can take wife or sister there will be no im- purity.” Full membership was not designed at first, but was suggested by Miss C. A. Hall, subsequently first lady assistant steward and first past assistant secretary of the National Grange. In the Grange woman is eli- gible to every office, except that of steward, but holds the office of lady as- sistant, to which no man is eligible. No class of our population is so debarred from the advantages of social life or the educational opportunities which obtain in villages and populous centers of business as the farming. The lecture, the concert, the strolling play, often a genuine help, can not be easily indulged in by dwellers on Industries. 139 isolated farms. Add to this the fact that agriculture involves more hours of hard, grinding toil—the soil often yielding but a grudging recompense— than any other profession ; is it any wonder that farmers have been and still are looked upon in many quarters as ignorant and boorish P We know there are exceptions to all rules; that there are and always have been exceptional farmers with exceptional advantages. And if the farmer's opportunities are limited and his toil most exact- ing, what must be said of the farmer's wife and daughters? Men lead everywhere, women follow ; men appropriate; women, especially among the working people, accept what is given. Women on the farms toil early and late with an intensity of application, of which the favored daughters of wealth or society can have no conception. I know whereof I speak, for I am a farmer's daughter, and can remember the mothers on the farms—and my mother was one of them—used to rise at 4 in the morning almost the entire year, and II at night rarely found them at rest. Often with a large family, generally of children and workmen, with more or less of a dairy, with aged parents to be comforted and Sustained through second childhood, the older children to be kept in school, with still tinier hands clinging to her skirts, and infant wants to be answered, with a thou- sand and one household matters to look after, often with no help but the little hands, with no changes to vary the monotony of her daily toil, unless it might be, if she chose, a long, tiresome walk to church, for the horses must rest on Sunday, or a half-yearly visit to the nearest market town, is it surprising that the farmer's wife should grow sad and desponding P Did she love flowers she had no time to cultivate them, and must be content with the yearly display of fruit-blossoms and roses and lilacs that perchance grace a corner of the kitchen garden. Did she love reading? There was the Bible, Watts's Hymns, a Charlotte Temple, and mayhap some history of Indian or French war; perhaps a weekly political paper. Perhaps for weeks she fol- lowed this dull round of toil without seeing a neighbor, for they were all as busy as herself. Is it strange that many, ere they reached their meridian, fell out of the ranks of the living P New England—aye, and the world, for that matter—is dotted all over with the graves of women who have died, if not of work, of spir- itual repression, and made no sign. It has recently been asserted in medical circles that no class furnished so many inmates to the insane asylum as the farmers' wives. If the intense toil, the monotony of farm life, the absence of social interchange of thought or recreation, the need of intellectual uplift- ing have so serious an effect upon the mothers, what must their influence be upon her offspring? In an address some years ago, Colonel Forney, of the Philadelphia Press, lamented that the “mothers of to-day do not work as hard as the mothers of the past.” I said, in my heart, thank God if they do not, for numberless children have been defrauded of their natural right 140 International Council of Women. to be born with sound minds in sound bodies by the overwork and mental repression of their mothers To such women, hungry for society, thirsting for intellectual culture and mental stimuli, the Grange has appeared a white-robed evangel, bearing hope and healing, lifting the burdens of life, and offering to their acceptance ac- tivities that are not all toil nor all duty. “The declaration that no Grange,” says Mrs. M. F. Kimball, of California, “shall be organized or exist with- Out Woman, was the emancipation of the women of the farm.” The same writer further says, “the limitless opportunities the Grange presents to women, if seized upon, may convert, by social contact, the isolated farm-house into a charmed resting place, where youth and age may find pure pleasures and more satisfying enjoyments than the busy centers of life afford.” Of the opportunities for education in the Grange, one prominent factor is debate. We are not limited in the field of discussion, except we are de- nied party politics and religious sectarianism. The whole field of morals, science, and government is open to our choice, and all the great questions of the day engage our attention—temperance, internal revenue, the tariff, all domestic affairs, the economies of home and home keeping, the chemis- try of cooking, the training of children, the cultivation of flowers, beside many topics related only to out-door work, in all of which women take a deep interest. Indeed we are coming to like political economy, and by the time the suffrage is permitted us the farmers' wives and daughters will use the ballot judiciously. Something more than a year since R. H. Thomas, editor of the Farmers' Friend, organized the Patrons' National Reading Circle, after the manner of the Chautauqua Circles. I see by a slip from the lecturer's department of the National Grange that in New England alone they have 750 reading circles, independent, perhaps, of the National. In addition to the foregoing, the National Grange issues a great mass of excel- lent reading matter in the shape of slips, sheets, and tracts, which are dis- tributed, by means of appropriations by the State Granges, to the subor- dinate Granges. Another attractive feature is the public meeting, in which women take an active part. In our own Grange we have held them monthly. In winter we invite the public into our hall to listen to addresses by the brothers, essays written by the sisters, and readings and recitations by the young peo- ple and children, interspersed with music and singing. Not unfrequently we engage some lecturer to occupy the platform. In summer our meeting becomes a “ harvest feast,” and is the farmers' picnic, held on different farms, sometimes involving a long ride through the country, amid bloom and bird-song, and usually chosen with reference to the facilities for dining in the open air. Here woman presides, and her culinary arts are discussed—experiments and experiences exchanged. These are red-letter days to the little folks, and racy, social seasons to the elders. Another Industries. - 141 educating force in the Grange is office-holding, the value of which is not to be computed. It teaches practical lessons of watchfulness, discipline, order. We make familiar acquaintance with methods of business that are invaluable, study parliamentary usage, learn to conduct meetings, to trust our own voices, and to understand and value individual opinion. Mrs. Augusta Cooper Bristol, well known as an able and eloquent speaker, averred emphatically she never could have attained her present position but for the inspiration of the Grange, which is quick to recognize individual ability, to encourage its improvement, and to give it the best opportunity. Still another attractive feature of the Grange is the co-operative, under which we mass our orders for goods of any description and buy in bulk, whereby we greatly increase the purchasing power of means oftentimes limited ; and, as the purchasing power increases, the comforts and attrac- tions of our homes increase. For, as Mrs. Flora M. Kimball says, “the pivot on which all our interest turns is home.” It is the center of the world's thought, the leading object of humanity’s ambition and love. The slumbering genius of a hundred thousand women has been awakened, and the papers bring us news that from one end of our grand Republic to the other the pen of the farmers' wives and daughters is busy ; their voices are heard in advocacy of those principles that made our order a necessity ; their influence is felt in the cause of temperance and moral reform. We hear of her in county councils with timely words of wisdom ; in Grange anniversaries, with addresses and poems instilling new life into the order, and with a happy felicity embellishing the practical routine duties of the hour. To woman the Grange is an educator in a way that no other society ever attempted. Mrs. C. Y. Herring, of Maine, writes: “The good of our country is what we are to labor for; not for combinations that may exist; not for some particular policy or man or set of men. Believing that individual happiness depends upon general prosperity, we will labor on in faith and hope for the good of our order, our country, and mankind, exercising charity and fidelity in all the relations of life, with our faces to the future, ready to act in progressive movements that are con- tinually coming to the front. We can maintain our life and usefulness only through onward activity; we can not live on the past. Orders that must point the index-finger backward are on the road to decay. Neither can we remain stationary; it is not in the nature of things. Then onward may the Grange move ; be strong and of a good courage, for the ‘Lord our God is with us.’” Mrs. Sherman Kimberly, of Connecticut, writes: “Woman's character differs somewhat from man's, and wherever she goes she takes with her a home influence. It is a part of her mission to make all places where her feet tread like home, and she is making each subordinate Grange home- like. She is making it a place where purity and refinement, prevail, the graces and virtues flourish, love, kindness and tenderness dwell. The Grange 142 International Council of Women. is indeed doing much for women. In it man invites her to stand by his side on the same leveſ with himself, his friend, his counsellor, his co-worker, and opens to her all the joys of extended social intercourse and all the avenues to knowledge and usefulness.” These are voices from the farms which might be multiplied indefinitely. They are the embodied thoughts of women who attend to all the multitudinous details of good housekeeping. They are women who can compose a poem or an essay over the ironing- board, or arrange a public meeting while they watch the dinner—imagina- tive women who hear a Miserere in the whispering pines, a Te Deum in every bird-song—sweet, motherly souls who can soothe the infant's wail or speed the departing spirit on wings of prayer or song. When I think of the net-work of thousands of Granges girdling the con- tinent from ocean to ocean, and from the lakes to the gulf, reaching tender, helpful, uplifting hands toward each other, I am sure the race is rising to purer living. Why, it only needs the strict, practical teaching of the tem- perance principles of this order to make in a single generation a marked change. In addition to its temperance principles the Grange is an advocate of peace. Its methods, its proclivities, its tastes, and its pursuits are all peaceful. Under its benign, uplifting influence who can tell what woman may not accomplish for the race? Surely no education in science, religion, morals, or politics need be lost to the mother. She will not love her home less, but more, for it is growing beautifully fair under her enlightened min- istrations. Sure I am she is fast transforming this boorish farmer—this butt of editorial comment, “with hayseed in his hair”—who has so courageously built a royal highway for her feet, into that prince of nature's noblemen—a just and generous gentleman. Yes, a gentleman ; a bold, invincible cru- sader as well. He is awakening to the sense of his own value as the food- producer—to a knowledge of his wrongs. He is beginning to know he has been robbed in all the ages, and that through the evolution of those ages his hour must come. - To be sure he wears no glove, but the hand within is mailed. Mailed in a stern loyalty to right, in a patriotic love of free government, in honest, truthful dealing, man with man, and in a sterling understanding of the prin- ciple and claims of eternal justice. I see him down the vistas of the future battling with wrong, searching out every scheme of corruption and rob- bery, every compact of oppression, while behind him glows his fireside, radiant in perpetual beauty. All honor to the Grange; its founders “builded better than they knew,” when they said to women, “Come upon our platform and share our warfare and its attainments.” Zsáo perpetua. Mrs. JoHNS. I present to you Hulda B. Loud, who represents the Knights of Labor, that organization in which the men have learned that their own best interests can not be built upon the wreck of woman's equal chances to gain independence. Industries. 143 Miss Loud. Knights of Labor must have a harsh, unpleasant sound to most of you fine ladies assembled here to-day, for with this order and similar ones is associated all the disorder that has existed in our country since the days of the great civil war. And yet this is pre-eminently the field for a woman, since woman's conservatism is necessary to bring together the ex- tremes of capital and labor, now seemingly growing wider and wider apart every day. Robert Grant, in his novel, “Face to Face,” commits the solu- tion of this labor problem to a woman, and she gives the answer. And, when men have learned to value a woman's counsel, a peaceful solution will be possible. Not because women are better than men—I never make that claim—but because women are the complements of men, each necessary to the other, and both necessary to a successful solution of all of life's problems. The danger is, the men will hold to their own sweet will till revolution brings its bloody lesson to point the way. There is a woman in a town not far from Boston, of a strong character, quick intuitions, and great legal acumen, who, not long ago, brought a strike to a speedy and successful settlement. She was secretary of the local exec- utive board and acted in her official capacity. She saw at once that the manufacturer had been careless of the interests of his employes, and that the men had been hasty in their action ; and so she saw at once that they should be brought together in order that they might become acquainted with each other. The manufacturer gained an advantage in his opening, and she came very near effecting a settlement right then and there, but by an indiscre- tion—a little tyranny, the tyranny that always comes of power—he lost a part of the advantage. He, however, offered to make amends the next day by submitting it to the State board of arbitration. One of the leaders of the strikers came to this woman and asked her concerning the advisability of submitting it to the State board. “By all means, do so,” she said. “I know the members of the board well enough to know that you will be per- fectly satisfied with their decision.” It was submitted, and the decision was satisfactory to both employers and employees, and no difficulty has occurred in that factory since that time." What do you suppose was that woman's reward P Why, at the next election of officers she was left off the executive board. The men, the leaders, were jealous of her power. In the ordinary affairs of life men are not jealous of women, but, when it comes to place and power, human frailty, male or female, pushes all obstacles to self-advancement one side, and will do so while selfishness is the main-spring of human action. One of the women of Massachusetts who speaks occasionally on the public platform, in connection with one of the members of the district executive board spoke one evening in a factory town. The next day this member of the board went to see the superintendent of the mills concerning one of his operatives, a young girl who had a grievance. The Superintendent would not see him as a committee 144, International Council of Women. of the Knights of Labor, but would speak with him as an individual. He accomplished nothing. This woman visited the mills in the forenoon, and, as she was about to leave them, she was introduced to the superintendent in the general office. He invited her to his private office, where she talked to him and an associate superintendent for two hours on the general subject of labor, and also concerning the reinstatement of this girl. She went directly from the mills to the house of this girl, and advised her, as it was evident to her that the girl had been hasty, to go down that afternoon to see the superintendent, telling her that she felt sure that she would be reinstated. She did so, and was reinstated ; and so a woman with her tact had accom- plished what an official of the order, whose business it was to look after such cases, had failed to do. District Assembly No. 30 of Massachusetts is now a State association, but has been so only a short time. Two years. ago it was the largest and richest district in the order, numbering some 115,000 members, about 5 per cent. of whom were women. These women are mostly from the shoe industry, in which the most enlightenment pre- vails. The most intelligent working men and women are in labor organiza- tions; the ignorant you find in anarchy and revolution. Many of these women are from the middle classes, for the shoe industry is the best paid in the United States. I mean those industries employing any considerable number of operatives. They are earnest and enthusiastic in this work of labor elevation." They are slowly coming to a realizing sense of their own worth as individuals, and when I talk to them of women's political rights they listen with attention, though the whole current of their lives has been far removed from any thought of this kind. They are holding office in their own female assemblies, and also in mixed assemblies, since in social and political privileges our order recognizes no distinction of sex. And they are beginning to question, if it is right to speak, vote, and hold office in these assemblies, why is it wrong to do so in the State P “A little learn- ing,” you see, “is a dangerous thing.” When men allowed women to learn the alphabet they gave up the whole case. - When I speak to labor audiences I give prominence to the Henry George, land theory as an important factor in the solution of this labor problem. And, after I had spoken in Ware, Mass., a factory town, the girls formed a Woman’s Reading Club, for the purpose of studying labor literature, espe- cially the Henry George land theory. These women, you must remember, are, ninety-nine hundredths of them, without education or culture; but they are, nevertheless, anxious to learn, and so thoughtful is this labor agitation making them that I consider this the most hopeful field there is for the ad- vance of woman-suffrage ideas, for here you have the masses easy to mould, and here alone can you reach them. Women have been appointed on committees in District Assembly No. 30, and I think a woman could have been elected to the executive board if the Industries., 145 right one had been willing to allow the use of her name. And yet there are not enough offices to go around among the men, and that might have mili- tated against her success. In the scramble for power, outside as well as inside of the Knights of Labor, no position of importance to the men will. come to the women. One of the most ardent of our order, a man who thinks that woman suffrage is the principle working through the human race that is . to bring the kingdom of heaven upon earth, when I was advocating the elec- tion of a woman to the executive board, said : “It is not a fit place for a woman.” “Then,” I replied, “it’s time for a woman to go down there and make it fit.” He was himself an aspirant for that same position at that time, and his ambition overcame his sense of justice. I question, however, if, in the analysis of his thought, he would be aware how great weight this selfish. consideration had with him. - It will be a long day before many men will attain the grandeur of char-, acter manifest in John Stuart Mill in his dedication of his great work on “Liberty.” You remember it—the tribute to his wife : “To her who was the inspirer, and, in part, the author, of all that is best in my works, I ded- icate this book.” Most men feel humiliated to owe their greatness to a woman, and yet most men do. This is, without doubt, the principal reason why women hold none of the offices in District Assembly 30. They are not urged by the men, and woman, from her very nature or education— it is hard to tell which in the present cramped condition of her faculties—" waits for this urging, and, by her timidity, impairs somewhat her use- fulness. In my own assembly of 1,000 members, about 200 of whom are women, women have held important offices, but have declined to serve” further. There are, however, women who are fitted to rule in politics, and their claims should be recognized, and will be, as woman advances towards—" not out of, as is generally considered the case—“ her proper sphere.” Mrs. Barry, delegate from the Knights of Labor, will, no doubt, give you evidence of woman's official recognition outside of District Assembly 30, as there are many notable instances. One, a woman of Chicago, has been master workman of a large mixed district in that city. ". The Knights of Labor is the grandest educational force in the whole world; to-day. It is the barrier that protects capital and monopoly from the results of their folly and crime. Most of you present here are students of his- tory, and have read Edmund Burke on the French Revolution, where you see the Bastile, Robespierre, and the bloody guillotine. But I ask you to read the other side. Read Thomas Payne, who wrote for the people, and gave a copyright of his “Crisis” and “The Rights of Man'' to every State in the Union ; always the friend of the people. “Thousands perished by the bloody guillotine alone; most horrible reflection,” you say. Millions per- ished from starvation, millions for centuries endured a living death to sup- port in luxury a debauched nobility, and above the wail of want and misery tº 146 International Council of Women. not one single voice was ever heard to penetrate the royal adamantine walls. You can not wholly put out the smouldering fires of justice in the human heart. You may prevent their outbreak for centuries. Meantime you sleep on a volcano. This labor question is the most important one before the people to-day, and I ask you to consider it in the light of its basic principles—fraternity, the concern of all, universal brotherhood—and not in the light of volcanic eruptions, strikes, and riots which occur in spite of us, which are but symp- toms of a disease that must have vent, the root of which we should reach by education. Labor organizations are the safety-valves of the discontent of the masses, that will continue while poverty exists and while there remains a wrong to be righted. Everywhere we should encourage these organizations and seek, by wise counsel, to direct their efforts. Outside of labor organi- zations you have anarchy and revolution. In Germany, Heinrich Heine voices the discontent of the masses in the following pitiful wail: “With"tearless eyes, in despair and gloom, Gnashing their teeth, they sit at the loom: * Thy shroud we weave, O Germany old ! We weave into it a curse threefold; We're weaving, weaving, weaving.’” And this weaving is going on all over the world, while those best able to lend a helping hand stand by unmoved. I know the voice of warning is considered incendiary speech, but history teaches you that she alone who raises the note of alarm in time of peace is the true friend of mankind. And I say to you, in closing, capital must meet labor on the broad ground of common humanity, in the spirit of true fraternity, or the “curse of Ger- many of old '' will be woven into our republican institutions, and over the republican experiment in America will be written “Failure.” It must be labor organization or revolution. Mrs. JoHNs. Helen Campbell, Vice-President of the Sociologic Society of America, who is now in France, sends us a valuable paper. THE WORKING WOMEN OF TO–DAY. A desire to know how far certain special advance for women touched the general, whether the breaking of mental and spiritual bonds for the better class had meant enlightenment in equal proportion for the one below, and how far the desire for larger life had colored the thought of the average worker, led me in the autumn of 1886 into researches among the working women of New York. This search continued there for the greater part of a year, and resulted in the discovery of facts which, though old, are also new, since their existence is periodically denied and periodically requires fresh demonstration. Even those most accustomed to face the dark side of life feel involuntarily that things must be better than individual experience would lead them to believe, and that the want and misery coming now and then to the surface mean simply a temporary condition in which the real workers have no share, and which can easily be accounted for by phrases we Industries. 147 all know: “Congestion of labor, overcrowding of cities,” etc. Aside from this, the conviction rules that women have never been so well paid or so comfortable, the condition of trade and the various occupations open to them bettering with every year. Such conviction may be taken as quite true for one side of the statement. Opportunity is larger, and the 200,ooo women at work in the city of New York, like other thousands in other cities, have open to them nearly one hun- dred trades as against a fifth of that number a generation ago. The better- paying trades are filled with women who have had some form of training in school or home, or have passed from one occupation to another till that for which they had most aptitude has been determined. The more helpless turn at once to this one thing about which there is no hesitation, and in the needle find their protection against starvation. That the needle is less and less a weapon of defense ; that the trades included in it, from dressmaking to shirt- making, are overcrowded, underpaid, and their scale of payments lessen- ing year by year, makes no difference. The girl too ignorant to reckon fig- ures—too dull-witted to learn by observation—takes refuge in sewing as the one thing possible to all grades of intelligence. The woman, too, with drunken or vicious husband, more helpless, often, than the widow, seeks the same source of employment. If respectably dressed and able to furnish some reference, employment is found for her in some factory or large establish- ment. But when fortune has sunk so low that the only clothing left is on the back of the worker, comes the final stage of demoralization and the neces- sity of dealing directly with the “sweater,” whose methods are more or less familiar to all who have studied the question of woman's work and wages. Very shortly it became plain that for this class, a large and steadily in- creasing number, the difficulties were fourfold ; Ist, her own incompetency must very often head the list and prevent her from securing first-class work; 2d, middle-men or sweaters lower the price to starvation point ; 3d, contract work done in prisons or reformatories brings about the same result; and 4th, she is under-bid from still another quarter, that of the country woman who takes the work at any price. The best firms and the worst are alike affected by these conditions, especially the last two, and all employees, good or bad, are divided into three classes, all of them subject to these general limitations. For New York, there are the west-side firms which in many cases care for their workmen in a degree at least, and where the work is done under conditions that we must call favorable; the east-side firms representing generally cheaper material and lower rates; and last, the slop work, which may be either east or west, more often the former, and includes every form of outrage and oppression that workers can know. Competition has sharpened wits till the Christian has acquired every art of the Jew, and grinds his victims with a composure born of the fact that they are merely parts of the great producing machine. 148, International Council of Women. As an illustration of some difficulties to be faced by our skilled workers, I give a few of the methods practiced by a large firm on Canal street, whose trade-mark is well known as the sign of good work, and whose prosperity is in always increasing ratio. Like many other firms, they had at first manu- factured on the premises, but discovered that this was quite an unnecessary expense. A roof over the heads of more than a hundred women, with space for their machines, meant not less than $2,500 a year to be deducted from the profits. The simple way out of this difficulty was to make the women themselves pay the rent, not in any tangible imposition of tax, but none the less certainly in fact. Nothing could be plainer. Manufacturing on the premises had only to cease, and it could even be put as a favor to the women that they were allowed to work at home. This rule was established at once; and, having stopped this leak, they turned to fresh possibilities, discovering at once another method. The women were told that hencefor- ward all packages of work would be sent from the cutting-room direct at a charge of only fifteen cents a package for express. A few of the bolder ones remonstrated, saying they could come for theirs, but were silenced instantly by a word they knew only too well. “There are plenty waiting to take our terms if you don’t like them. It suits us best to send the packages from here.” - In the meantime the firm arranged with the head of a small express con- cern to deliver the goods at twelve cents a package, thus adding to the weekly receipts a clear gain of three cents per head. Firm and ex- pressman, it hardly need be said, played into each other's hands, the wagon- drivers having no knowledge of anything beyond the fact that they were to collect the fifteen cents and to turn them over to their superiors. In some way the real state of the case became known, but no one dared remonstrate any more than when, a few weeks later, it also leaked out that the firm charged five cents a dozen more than it cost them, on the thread. Last, came a change in the method of payment, which hitherto had been made at the desk when work was brought in. Now checks were given on a Bowery bank, and, in heat or storm alike, the women must walk over and wait their turn in the long line on the benches, thus sacrificing from half an hour to an hour of time, their only capital. As the case now stands, then, for this firm, which represents the system adopted by many, the working woman not only pays the rent that would be required for factory, but gives it a profit on expressage, thread, time lost in going to bank, and often the price of a dozen : garments, payment for the dozen being deducted by many foremen if there is a flaw in one. The foreman becomes the scapegoat if any questions are asked, the usual statement being, if the women's difficulties are mentioned, “Oh that was before the last foreman left; we discharged him as soon as: we found out how he had served the women.” A favorite method, known to many firms, is advertising for women and Industries. 149 girls to learn the trade. The applicant who comes in answer to such ad- vertisement is anxious to learn at once, and gives her best intelligence to mastering every detail. Into her first week she puts an energy of effort that could hardly last, and often she is beguiled by small payments and large promises into continuing weeks and even months, always expecting the alway delayed payment. - With the question of overtime; of the determined and rooted prejudice against substituting household service for the long hours at the machine; of the absolute ignorance of how to make the best and most of the scanty wages, and to provide something more nourishing from it than the rank tea, boiled to extract the last tinge of strength, and the baker's bread, most often but- terless, I do not propose to speak. My business is simply to give you certain phases of the case as it stands for the working woman in all our large cities, with a glance at comparative conditions abroad. Naturally, the evils I have specified press most hardly on the untrained workers, the woman of skill and some education being fairly certain of a living. But competition has less- ened the possibilities even for this woman, while for the grade below it has brought wages to the lowest point of subsistence, and we face an army of haggard, weary, hopeless wretches, too exhausted and depleted by long- continued labor for progress. The question for this order of worker is not for us alone, but for all civili- zation. It had not seemed possible that the other side of the sea could know anything so deplorable as the conditions that faced one in the attics and basements of the tenement-house district in New York, and to know how the case really stood, and if any advantage was on one side, it seemed neces- sary to make the same search in London, and in some degree on the Con- tinent. Six months in London have partially answered the question, and writing to-day in Paris it is plain that, given all differences of national tem- perament and custom, the story is practically the same for all. London is the first consideration in such attempt, not only because it leads in numbers, but because our own conditions are in many points an inheritance which crossed the sea with the Pilgrims and is in every drop of Anglo-Saxon blood. It became certain in the beginning of the London experience, and time simply confirmed the fact, that the English working woman has not only the disabilities which her American sister faces—some inherent in herself and as many arising from the press of the present system—but, added to this, the apparent incapacity of the employers to see that she has rights of any de- scription whatsoever. The factory act limiting time, and the various attempts to legislate in behalf of women and children, strike the average employer as gross interference with constitutional rights. Where he can, he evades. Where he can not he is apt to grow purple over the impertinence of meddling reformers who can not let well enough alone. He stands in 150 International Council of Women. the way of all investigation, and nothing could well be more difficult than to determine the actual position of the worker. In every trade, however, one fact is at once clear, and that is that overtime is taken as a right, and any protest against it is simply absurd. From 8 A. M. to 8 P.M. is the usual day, stretching often to Io o'clock, and this applies to every trade open to women, while in many, if there is special press of work, the hours extend indefinitely, a few houses giving from four to eight cents an hour for overtime. The wage paid is in increase ratio to the hours required. A pound a week is regarded as a fortune, and the majority of needle-women of the same grade as those dealt with in the opening of this paper receive from eight to twelve shillings; nor is there any indication that the scale will rise, or that better days are in store for one of these toilers. Here and there a spasmodic attempt is made to discover their actual con- dition, but London has no statistics of labor in the sense of the admirable work of our own State boards, all facts being locked up in almost inacces- sible Blue Books. London, also, is far behind other cities in every point affecting the well-being of operatives of every class. The great manufact- uring cities of England are doing much to lighten oppressive conditions and give some possibility of improvement. The attitude of the London em- ployer is therefore all the more puzzling. It is marked by indifference to a brutal degree, and wages are at the lowest and profits at the highest attain- able point. It is true that he is driven by a force often quite beyond his control—foreign competition, French and German, being no less sharp than that on his own soil. He must study chances of profit to a farthing, and in such study there is naturally small thought of his workers, save as hands in which the farthings may be found. Many a woman goes to her place of work leaving behind her children who have breakfasted with her on “kettle- broth,” and will be happy if the same is certain at Supper time. “There's six of us has had naught but kettle-broth for a fortnight,” said one. “You know what that is? It’s half a quarter-loaf soaked in hot water with a ha'p'orth of drippings and a spoonful of salt. When you've lived on that night and morning for a week or two you can’t help but long for a change, though, God forgive me, there's them that fares worse. But wages is down out of sight, and maybe it'll be the broth without the bread before we're through. There's no living to be had in Old England any more, and yet the rich folks don’t want less. Do you know how it is ma'am P. Is there any chance of better times, do you think? Is it that they want us to starve? I’ve heard that said, but some how it seems as if there must be hearts still, and they’ll see soon, and then things 'll be different. Oh, yes they must be different.” - Will they be different P It is unskilled workers who have just spoken, but do the skilled fare much better P Here is a portion of a table of earnings prepared a year or two since by the chaplain of the Clerkenwell Prison, an Industries. 151 earnest missionary among the poor, this table ranking as one of the best of the few attemps to discover the actual position of the working woman at present. Making paper bags, 4%d. to 5%d. per thousand ; possible earnings, 5s. to 9s, a week. Buttonholes, 3d. per dozen ; possible earnings, 8s. per week. Shirts, 2d. each, worker finding her own cotton ; can get six done between 6 A. M. and 11 P. M. Sack-sewing, 6d. for twenty-five, 8d. to Is. 6d. per hundred ; possible earnings, 7s. per week. Pill-box making, IS. for thirty-six gross; possible earnings, IS. 3d. a day. Collar buttonhole mak- ing, 1s. per dozen ; can do three or four dozen between 5 A. M. and dark. Whip making, 1s. per dozen ; can do a dozen a day. Trouser finishing, 3d. to 5d. each, finding own cotton ; can do four per day. Shirt finishing, 3d. to 4d. per dozen. So the list runs on through all the trades open to women. Nor is the outlook much better in sunny Paris, though the Frenchwoman starves more smilingly than her London sister shrouded in fog. From Germany, Belgium, Italy, and every country where women are at work, comes the same wail, and the cry of the London toilers is the cry of all: “There must be hearts, still, and they 'll see soon, and then things 'll be different. Oh, yes, they must be different.” Will they be different? Never, unless we who come to freedom and knowledge and all that makes life worth living know that no one of these possessions is truly ours unless its possibility dawns also for these weak ones whose stumbling feet have yet no path in which they may walk securely. I shall urge no method, apply no precept of political economy. To each must be the action which seems just to her own soul. But the laborer has fallen on evil days. The old joy in labor is dead. Its resurrection can come only through us, who listen and wonder, it may be, why philanthropy has not settled such questions; and if not philanthropy, then why not the State or the church P Not one nor all of these can do the needed work. It is a change of ideals that is needed ; a simplification of all living; a refusal to own any good which can not be shared, and the solemn purpose to make larger life possi- ble, not only for those who crave it, but for those who may even reject it. It is because all are parts of one great whole that real progress will be impos- sible till the new ideal reaches out to and enfolds all ; till competition and the baseness born of it retreat to the shadow from whence they came, and co-operation in its largest, noblest sense is the law of life—the fulfillment of the old word spoken long ago, yet vital as in its first hour, “Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” This was the word of one who toiled with his own hands and ate only the fruit of his own labor; but side by side with it may stand the word of one whose simple nobleness is also our lesson : “But laying hands on another To coin his labor and Sweat, He goes in pawn to his victim For eternal years in debt.” 152 International Council of Women. Mrs. JoHNs. We have with us Mrs. Lita Barney Sayles, the General Sec- retary of this Society, who is also editor of Zhe Co-operative AWews of America. ‘‘ CO-OPERATION, THE LAW OF THE NEW CIVILIZATION.” Mrs. SAYLEs. I have the honor of presenting to this International Coun- cil of Women a brief statement of the work and principles of the Sociologic Society of America. This organization dates from the spring of 1882. It was formed exclusively by women, and had its inception in a course of par- lor lectures given by its president, Mrs. Imogene C. Fales, of New York, on “Industrial Co-operation.” In addition to the usual officers of such socie- ties this has a co-operation board and branch societies in various cities, its headquarters being in New York. Its work is educational, and is carried on by means of conferences, public and parlor meetings, and the dissemi- nation of its principles by means of leaflets, correspondence, and the publi- cation of a quarterly sheet, Zhe Co-operative AVews of America. The work is, however, no longer confined to women, but men practically interested in various forms of co-operative industry have become mem- bers, and are actively endeavoring to unite in a national co-operative board the scattered, unrelated industries of the country. The movement contains within itself the germs of an international alliance for the promotion of co- operative organization and preservation of social peace. In pursuance of this phase of the work the president, Mrs. Fales, visited England last May and attended, as delegate from the American Co-operative Board, the Nineteenth Annual Congress of the Co-operators of the United Kingdom. Her plea was for a great educational system to propagate the principles of co-operation. She was ably seconded in her efforts by M. de Boyve, who represented eighty- five organized co-operative bodies of France. The congress was held at Car- lisle, and was attended by over 590 delegates. The result of these united efforts was the formation of an International Co-operative Alliance, composed of representatives from the boards of En- gland, France, Italy, and the United States. As an illustration of the success of distributive co-operation, we point to the Rochdale system, which was inaugurated in England forty-four years ago by twenty-eight poor weavers. The annual report of the chief register shows that 984 societies made official returns to the central board in 1885, and that the membership of these soci- eties was about 682, ooo, their sales for the year amounting to $424, ooo, ooo. George Jacob Holyoake, in a recent letter, says: “Distributive co-operation is well established and extending. Leeds, for instance, has about 20, ooo members. It has so many branch stores and is so continually erecting new ones that they keep a staff of builders, who move from place to place as new stores have to be built. During the last twenty years the business done co- operatively by workingmen in Great Britain is estimated at twelve hundred and fifty millions of dollars, the profits of which, about one hundred million dollars, have gone back into their own pockets.” Industries. 153 Out of the retail stores has grown the wholesale, with its trading capital of nearly $4,000,ooo, and now productive co-operation, with the men as their own employers, is developing naturally from these conditions. It is not generally known that the most prosperous cotton-mills in Great Britain are those run on co-operative principles at Oldham, with $27,ooo, ooo of capital. The outfit represents more spindles than there are in Russia, Italy, Spain, and Austria, and nearly as many as in Germany and France. Turn for a moment from the consideration of the economic to the moral value of the co-operative principle. In the letter from Mr. Holyoake, above referred to, he says: “When I first knew Rochdale, all the working people needed relief. All who could get it had it, and the chief hope of others was that the work-house might not be too full when their turn came. Now they subscribe to the relief funds, to hospitals, present fountains to the town, and in all things give like gentlemen. It is in this manner that co-operation, by ameliorating social conditions, transforms the old civilization and brings in a new order of things. Mindful of the old adage, “nothing succeeds like success,” the Sociologic Society seeks to show, by dwelling upon assured facts in other countries, what can be done also in ours to lighten the burden of life and institute better industrial and social conditions among the people. It believes, with Thomas Hughes, that if co-operation in twenty-five years made life easier for three millions of English people, should it not in fifty years do this far more perfectly for ten millions, and that what may be done for this number may, in time, be done for a nation ? The Sociologic Society of America is teaching the practical adaptation of the Golden Rule to trade, and showing the results of peace and prosper- ity that will necessarily flow therefrom ; that co-operation is the practical expression of the law of mutual helpfulness by which we are morally bound to our neighbor, as it is a religious as well as an economic principle. That social development is contingent upon individual development; individual development is through intellectual and moral activity, and these in turn rest upon a physical basis, which demands, in order that life shall be prop- erly sustained, a just compensation for labor. That the starting point, therefore, of social reformation is the relations of capital and labor. The basis of social life must be the moral law, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” which, economically expressed, is, “Thou shalt make thy neigh- bor’s interests identical with thine own.” Mrs. Johns. You will now be addressed by Leonora M. Barry, delegate and organizer of the Knights of Labor, whose credentials are signed by Gen- eral Master Workman T. V. Powderly. whAT THE KNiGHTS OF LABOR ARE DOING FOR WOMEN. The Knights of Labor are a body of men organized for protection and education, that they may be the better able to cope with the scheming 11 154 International Council of Women. means resorted to by those who live upon the proceeds of their toil, and subtract from labor so large a portion of labor's rights, The Knights of Labor were organized openly in 1879. For several years they existed in Secrecy, because they feared that terrible weapon so unmercifully used upon the employees—the black list. Fearing that, they kept many years in secret ; but after having become so compact and strong, after having the gospel of the Knights of Labor taught from Maine to Oregon, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and over in the Old World, they then made known their aims, which were to abolish poverty, to demand that moral and indus- trial worth and not wealth be made the standard of national and individual greatness. Those poor working men, the tin-pail brigade, the seventy-two thousand miners of Pennsylvania, the hundreds and thousands of unskilled workmen, those people recognized what your legislators, what your pulpits, what your press have failed to recognize within all the years of your agita- tion—woman’s right to equitable consideration by the side of men in the na- tion's government. Having recognized this, they inserted in the platform of principles that plank which demands equal pay for equal work; and ere many more years have passed over our heads, there will be another plank inserted not only in the platform of the Knights of Labor, but upon the statute-books of our country, making it a criminal offense for any man to dare employ a woman at less remuneration for labor than will enable her to procure the comforts of life without necessitating temptation to sin. The Knights of Labor are elevating the conditions of men ; teaching them self- respect ; their duty to themselves and each other. We are building around our working girls a wall of protection to defend them from the indignities which heretofore they have been subjected to, such as making the price of their honor the possibility of a place to earn their livelihood. We are trying to teach the outside world that the working woman has feelings, has sensitiveness, has her heart's longings and desires for the better things of life, and any social or industrial system or environment that pre- vents woman from enjoying those gifts of a common Father must be broken, because it is utterly false. Any condition of society that prevents woman or child from cultivating the three elements of which humanity is composed— the moral, physical, and mental—that state of society is false, and it becomes the duty of every honest man and woman, I care not what their station in life, to try to overturn it. There are no better law supporters, no more loyal citizens true to the laws of their country and their country's flag than the organized Working men and women of to-day. They do not demand revo- lution, but they do demand reform ; they do not ask it by the power of physical force ; they do not ask it by the destruction of life or property; they simply ask it at the hands of the law-making bodies of their nation. And as we, the people, are the law-making bodies, and those whom we send to the legislative halls are but our servants, we, the women in the Knights - Industries. 155 of Labor, are educating our men to know what the ballot means, not only for the working man, but for the working man’s wife and sister. Seven years ago I was left without knowledge of business, without knowledge of work, without knowledge of what the world was, with three fatherless children looking to me for bread. To support these children it became my duty to go out in the army of the employed and in one of the largest factories in central New York. I went, and for four years and seven months remained a factory woman for the support of my little ones. Four years ago this spring I became a Knight of Labor. I became a member of an as- sembly of 1,500 women. Of those 1,500 women from the withdrawing of what is called trades assembly—women of one particular trade or calling—I became the master workman of an assembly of 927 women, ranging from I4 years of age to 6o. And let me say to you here that although there was not one amongst them could boast of more than a minor part of a common School education, yet in that body of women there was more executive ability, more tact, more shrewdness, more keen, calculating power than could be found in twice that number of men in the United States. I was sent from my assembly, composed entirely of women, to the District Assembly, No. 65, which met in the city of Albany; from that district I was sent to Richmond, Va., a delegate to the General Assembly, and from there I was sent into the world to educate my sister working women and the public generally as to their needs and necessities. We are instituting co-operative industries throughout the breadth and length of our land—the industries in which women are engaged—taking those we find in the most helpless condition, and from becoming operatives in those factories they eventually become shareholders. In the city of Chicago, a tailoring estab- lishment was started. A few girls were locked out because they went to a labor parade. It was a breach of discipline, but they did not deserve so severe a punishment. They came back, and by soliciting subscriptions by every means in their power they raised $400, with $1 oo of which they paid a month's rent and started with $300 capital. Inside of nine months those few men and women in that co-operative tailoring estabiishment at 882 Fifth avenue, Chicago, Ill., have done $36, ooo worth of business. We have our co-operative shirt factories in Baltimore and New York, conducted solely by women ; we have our collar and cuff factories in Waterford, N. Y. ; we have our co-operative knitting mill at Little Falls, N. Y., and many other indus- tries. And I am at this time negotiating with Nashville, Tenn., for the institution of co-operative industry for the manufacture of women's and children's underwear, at which our poor unfortunate sisters in New York suffer more than can be imagined any human being might suffer under a slop- shop system of work in New York city. I have, during my connection with the organization, instituted what is known as the Working Women's National Beneficial Fund. This gives to 156 International Council of Women. women in sickness not less than $3 nor more than $5 per week, and in case of death not less than $75 nor more than $1 oo. It gives protection to every woman, whether she be a Knight of Labor or not, for it is the duty, the aim, and the object of Knights of Labor to elevate woman, no matter what her nationality, her creed, her color, or her position in life. The Knights of Labor are taking the little girls from the factory, the workshop, and the mines, and educating them, because we know that the little child of to-day is the mother of the future. As these are the children of to-day, and as these shall be the working women of the future, we demand that they shall be taken from the workshop, factory, and the mine and put into the school- rooms to be educated. If there is any one State for which I might make a Special plea it is that monopoly-bound State of Pennsylvania, with her 125,- ooo children under the age of fifteen employed in the workshops, factories and mines. While you are looking to the literary attainments of these women; while you are mounting to your position at the top of the ladder, do not, I ask you, in the name of justice, in the name of humanity, do not forget to give your attention and some of your assistance to the root of all evil, the industrial and social system that is so oppressive, which has wrought the chain of circumstances in which so many have become entan- gled, and which has brought the once tenderly-cherished and protected wife, the once fondly-loved mother to the position of the twelve or fourteen- hour toiler of to-day. If you would protect the wives and mothers of the future from this terrible condition we find these in to-day, give them your assistance. The Knights of Labor may have made mistakes, but they are the mistakes of those who started out with a dim knowledge of their object before their eyes and do not see their way clear to reach it, but by education and by help, the black list, the boycott, the strike, and the lock-out shall soon be swept away into the dark ages where they belong, and no longer be found under the stars and stripes of our American flag. Mrs. JoHNs. The next speaker is Mrs. Esther L. Warner, who has been for twenty years a practical farmer in Nebraska, has educated and supported her children, and paid for her mile-square farm ; hence she is eminently able to speak about WOMEN As FARMERS. Mrs. WARNER— - “He that by the plow would thrive, Himself must either hold or drive.” This old couplet intimates that muscle is the main element of success in farming, but modern improvements have changed all that, and what is needed now to succeed in agriculture is a guiding force to direct men and machinery. Can women act as this guiding force? They have demonstrated their ability to acquire theoretical knowledge in all the departments of science and the arts as taught in the Schools. Industries. 157 Agriculture is not higher than astronomy, nor deeper than geology, nor more complicated than chemistry. To understand something of the nature of different soils, to learn the proper depth to cut the turf in breaking prairie, what rotation of crops will produce the best results, and how to plant pota- toes, must be supposed to come within the range of woman’s capacity. But knowledge is not always power. To be able to “say to this one go and he goeth, and to another come and he cometh, and to a servant do this and he doeth it,” is an important aid in carrying on successfully any business. Farming requires a talent for managing men, and if we are to credit the assertions of our gentlemen friends women as a class do not lack in that direction; but your speaker confesses having been an ignominious failure in trying to manage men who needed managing. Her only resource was to find, if possible, those who chose to do right, and then let them do as they pleased. The numerous women who have deserted school-rooms for farms may be supposed to have learned, by trying their “’prentice hands” on boys, how to exercise a controlling influence over boys of larger growth, and it would be interesting to know how many ex-teachers are a success as farmers. Experiments are being made all over the West, from Dakota to Texas. - To theorize and assert that a thing can be done is not so convincing as the fact that it has been done. The large number of women all over the coun- try, North and South, who have taken homesteads in Dakota, Kansas, and Nebraska, and the cattle queens of Texas and Colorado, are facts which furnish their own commentary. And recently there comes the story of a horse queen in Idaho who owns seven or eight hundred horses, and finds them more profitable than cattle-raising or wool-growing. Another question comes to us: Is farming as an occupation womanly P The wise man, in describing the model woman, says: “She considereth a field and buyeth it; with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard; ” and this attention to outside interests does not lead to neglect of the internal arrangements of home or the adornment of her person. “She is not afraid of the snow, for all her household are clothed in scarlet.” “She maketh for herself coverings of tapestry; her clothing is silk and purple.” There is no hint that she is out of her sphere and should be remanded to the seclusion of the kitchen and the nursery. She is not told that her earnings belong to her husband, or that her individual life should be merged in his. The eulogy of the inspired writer closes with these words: “Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her own works praise her in the gates.” What is womanliness? Is it weakness and incapacity, or is it the best in- stincts of womanhood permeating her whole being, radiating from her per- sonality, and finding expression in all gentle courtesies and womanly ways P It is no fragile, evanescent thing to be blown away by prairie winds; floods can not drown it or droughts consume it. It survives hard work ; and a w 158 International Council of Women. woman of refinement might choose to take up “de shubble and de hoe” laid down by “Poor Old Ned” rather than sit in “unwomanly rags,” singing the “Song of the Shirt.” When a woman is thrown on her own resources for support she looks about for something which she can do. Progressive changes in the present century have thrown open to her the whole range of professional, commercial, and industrial occupations, and the world is all before her where to choose ; but she must consider her limitations—those of circumstances, of early educa- tion, and, most important of all, the limitations of her own character. Many have invested their little all in trade, and found too late they lacked the commercial instinct, Many a woman is totally unfitted by nature and inclination to endure the friction and competition of professional and industrial life. If conscious of these limitations she looks for some- thing different. Her Father is rich—“ the earth is his and the fullness thereof.”—but she knows that by the laws of his paternal government his children must “work out their own salvation ” from physical want. She is encouraged by the thought that nature is no respecter of persons—the rain descends “alike upon the just and the unjust,” and the “earth yields her increase '' to faithful tillage, irrespective of sex. She reasons that as every- thing has its uses, if she is fit for nothing else she must be good at farming. Such logic has sent some women West, myself among the number. The great majority of women will always choose the sheltered places in the world's work, though the future may show more exceptions to this rule than the past. It has been said by a well-known modern writer that “in an ideal state of society the outside work of the world will be largely performed by men,” and we are not inclined to dispute him ; but necessity knows no law. When the civil war burst on this country two ladies from the North (sisters) were teaching in Louisiana. The school was discontinued, but hostile armies barred the way homeward, and Union sentiments made their stay unpleasant and even dangerous. They fled to Texas, bought some sheep, a pony, and a cabin. Alternating with each other in herding and housekeeping, they ran their ranch alone until the profits enabled them to enlarge their business and employ help. The close of the war found them in easy circumstances and on the road to wealth. When the white men of the South were swallowed up in its armies and the slaves were released from all obligations to their owners, women educated in luxury and helplessness rose to the occasion, hired and directed the labor, and Saved their plantations from ruin and themselves and people from starva- tion. To many a wife and mother who finds in the internal arrangements of her home and the care of her children congenial and sufficient work there comes a time when she must be father and mother to her children, and if the finan- cial situation demands an addition to the means for their support and educa- Industries. 159 tion, the question of ways and means must be considered. Under the stress of such conditions, your speaker, in 1863, just after the passage of the home- stead bill, went West and accepted a farm from Uncle Sam. When the family took possession, in 1864, the working force consisted of the mother, two sons, aged, respectively, fifteen and two-and-a-half years, and a daughter of twelve. The head of the enterprise had the experience of having lived on a farm the first twelve years of her life, and a determination to find out how to do it. The eldest boy understood the care of cows and horses, and had a mind to work. Some of the experiences of farming for over twenty years, its failures and successes, might be of interest, but time forbids. Suffice it to say, we succeeded in raising as many chickens to the acre as our neigh- bors, and when the drought killed our trees we planted more. Grasshoppers came and we were short on vegetables, but we never sent East for help and we didn’t eat grasshoppers. The experiment in farming still goes on ; there is a firm consisting of mother and son. The junior member acts as executive, but the senior is not a silent partner. The time allotted is too short to treat so large a subject exhaustively, and it has been said that statistics should be seen and not heard. Persons interested who search for these will find ample justification for placing among the industries “women as farmers.” Miss ANTHONY. After having seen the practical factory girl and heard her speak on this platform, and a practical farmer, I want to tell you - that Mrs. Warner is not only a practical farmer, but a practical mother, too. When we were out in the Nebraska campaign, six years ago, some of the University students there thought they would bring objections against woman's capacity to vote; and in the balcony of that theater sprang up a young man and made an argument proving woman's capacity not only to vote, but to act independently for herself in every department ; and that young man was a student of the State University of Nebraska, and the son of this woman who has just spoken to you. I now show you another practical woman, Mrs. Mary E. Gray Dow, the President of the Dover, N. H., Street-Car Railroad Company. Mrs. Dow. I need not say anything about the horse-railroad, as you have all heard about it, but I would like to say something that I have done at farming. I have, with my own hands, set every plant of the finest aspara- gus beds in our city; have raised small fruits, gooseberries, raspberries, and strawberies, in abundance. Mrs. HARRIET R. ROBINSON, of Malden, Mass. I went into a Lowell factory when I was eleven years old, and worked fourteen hours a day. I had a dear mother, who gave me enough to eat, and took good care that I had sleep enough, and so it did not harm me. I went to the factory in the morning at 5 o'clock, worked two hours, and then ran out for my break- fast—a half-hour, perhaps—then went back for six hours more, and so the thing went on until 7 o'clock at night. I stayed there for eleven years, until I was married. 160 International Council of Women. I remember the old life well. How good it was, and how many good women came there to work because then women could not make a living anywhere but in the factory. And so I think some of the best women came to Lowell; women who had not a single hope in the world; widows who were then called “relicts,” all sorts of women you speak of here—old maids and poor women with no position, whose fathers had left them nothing but the right to live on the farm as an incumbrance. But they finally heard of the Lowell factory and came there. And, oh, how hopeless they were ! But the first money they earned When they felt the jingle of the silver in their pocket, then for the first time, their heads became erect and they walked as if on air. And how they spent it ! They dressed themselves, and had books for which they had longed, and the new life for them had begun. They learned to express their thoughts, and the lady is here on the platform whose husband was the best friend and helper those women ever knew. He did a great work for the women of New England. I consider the Lowell factory my alma mater. I am just as proud of it as many women are of the colleges in which they have been educated. We had a magazine called the Zowe// Offering, and read our articles we had written for it to Mr. Thomas, and he used to correct them for us if they needed it. I have written about it in the report of the Bureau of Statistics of Labor of Massachusetts. Among those girls are many known to fame. There were many who wrote books; some have written poems. Lucy Lar- com, whom you all know, who really has a national fame, was one of these. She went there day after day with the rest of us, and worked and earned her living while she wrote her poems. Many of these authors went into other fields of labor. I became a reformer, because it seemed to me to be of more importance to help my race than it was to write verse, although I must con- fess that I like to write verses. I had many experiences in my child life in the Lowell mills; one of them was to learn to be a striker. At 11 years of age I struck. I was a little doffer. I was so young and small that I was allowed to run out part of the hour when we were not busy taking off the full bobbins and replacing them with others. This had to be done exactly on the hour. And in that way I was taught to be prompt. The strike happened in this way: It was one of the first ones in this country, I think, and occurred in 1836. When the girls prepared to strike I joined with them. They had meetings, went to a field, I think, and some one talked to them ; and finally a girl got up on a stump and made a speech. I do not remember exactly what she said, but I remember I thought it was the most dreadful thing in the world to hear a woman talking in public. Well, when the time came that we were to leave our work finally, the big girls would not start, and they hesitated and said, “Had we better strike, and will it do any good P” or, “I guess we might as well go back to work.” But I said, “I do not care who strikes, I going to Industries. 161 y strike,” and so, leading the procession of all those large girls, so much older than I, we marched out of the room. The only bad result of all this was that my mother, who was a very poor woman, with four children, was turned out of her house by the agent of the corporation, who said: “The large girls among your boarders you could not prevent from striking, but your daughter, being so small, you certainly could control.” My dear mother never coerced her children, but permitted us to grow up in freedom of spirit and develop through our own hard experiences. In 1836 a few of these factory girls formed themselves into a club, with a constitution and list of officers. One of the articles stated that they formed themselves into this organization for the purpose of improving the gifts which God had given them. This was the first woman's club in New England, if not in all the world, and was the advance guard of Sorosis and the hundreds of other woman's clubs which have sprung up all over the country. Mrs. JoHNs. I will now present Mrs. M. Louise Thomas, President of Sorosis. Mrs. THOMAs. I am very glad to be permitted to tell this story of the Zozºe// Offering, the first magazine ever written wholly by women. Mrs. Robinson has already told you of its establishment. As the young people say, that was rather before my time ; that is, it was before my marriage to the good man who conceived the idea. My husband, the Rev. Abel C. Thomas, was settled in Lowell, Mass., as the pastor of a church there ; and he saw so much talent in the girls employed in the factories, that he con- ceived the idea of establishing improvement circles. They were held every. week in the vestry-room of his church, and of another church in the same city, that of Rev. T. B. Thayer. Among other forms of entertainment, it was suggested that the young women should prepare papers; those that were not ready to speak could read. Mr. Thomas very soon perceived great ability in their productions. He had some skill as a practical printer in his early life, and it entered his mind that he would publish these papers in the form of a magazine. When Dickens came first to the United States he visited Lowell, and he was greatly interested in the ability—in the quality, rather—of the minds of the operatives in the mills, as exemplified in their writings. Those of you who have read his travels in the New World will find that he makes special mention of the Zowe// Offering. When Harriet Martineau came to make her first visit to this country she was also deeply interested, and on her return to her own land she made a reprint of the Zowe/ Offering, entitled Mind. Among the Spindles. The volume was upward of 200 pages. During her visit, I will say, there were three young women who were particularly prominent as writers among the factory operatives. They prepared a volume—a bound volume of the Iowe// Offering, and they inscribed upon the back of it, “To Harriet Mar- 162 International Council of Women. tineau; from Harriet Farley, Harriet Lees, and Harriet Curtis,” and they were known by the name of the “Three Harriets.” In 1843, I think it was, Mr. Thomas withdrew from the editorial charge and left Lowell, and these three Harriets succeeded him in the editorship of the magazine. There is not, perhaps, very much in this movement, but it shows to you that that prophecy given to us by Mrs. Barry of days to come when labor shall stand on golden legs is not an idea without proper founda- tion. In those days not only labor stood on golden legs, but the product of labor, the brain power, was markedly affluent. These things, as I have told you, have come to me by hearsay, but they are deeply implanted in my mind, because I know the girls of that day who wrote while attending two looms, keeping them going one on the right and one at the left, and at the same time preparing the contents which went into the next morning's print. I think Mrs. Robinson does not quite do justice to the high standard of those women. They were women not only of strong, vigorous intellect, but they had a good New England education, and many of them have married, and are not only distinguished in the world of letters, but they have taken as high positions in the land as many other women. Miss ANTHONY. Now, I am going to tell you my factory experience : My father was a manufacturer, and one day I heard him say to my mother that one of the girls who attended the spooler was sick, and he didn’t know where he could get anybody to fill her place. My sister and myself both Sprang forward and said, “Father, let us go ; we know how to tend the spooler, and we can do it.” Mother said : “No, you mustn't go ; it isn't a safe place.” But father said it would be a good thing to let the girls go and see if they could do it. “Well,” said mother, “if it must be so, only one shall go ; ” so, in order to decide the question as to who should go, we drew cuts, with two slips of paper, and the one who drew the longest was to go into the factory; and, to the day of my sister's death, she insisted that she drew the long cut and worked in the factory two weeks, and I insisted that I drew the long cut and worked two weeks. I do not know which way it was, but the bargain was that the fortunate drawer of the long slip should divide her wages with her unfortunate sister. The wages were twelve shillings a week, and out of those twelve shillings, or $1.50, the ordinary girl paid her board—$1.00 a week—and had 50 cents left to buy her clothing; but the fortunate one, whichever it was, worked her two weeks, earned her $3.oo, and shared them. My sister, true to her artistic nature, bought a beautiful bead-bag. And what did I do with my twelve shillings? [A voice in the audience : “Gave it away.”] No, I didn’t. I bought six coffee cups and saucers for my mother—plain, blue, large, old-fashioned coffee cups, and they were the nicest dishes at that time that had ever been in my mother's house. Another thing I remember. One day I heard father praising Sally Ann, Industries. 163 a great tall woman from the Green Mountains of Vermont. She was a weaver, and he said, “Sally Ann has wonderful skill; she knows even more than the overseer.” The fact was that whenever there was any trouble either with the machinery or the yarn on the beam the overseer could not remedy, he would go to Sally Ann and say, “I will tend your eight looms if you will look after Jane’s.” Sally Ann looked after Jane's looms and quickly saw what was the matter. She straightened the tangled yarn or she found the defect in the machinery; and I remember, though I was a mere child, of saying to my father, “If Sally Ann knows more about the weaving and machinery than Elijah, then why don't you make her the overseer P’’ Miss Loud. Your Chairman has allowed me two minutes more. I want to tell you that Mrs. Barry, whom you have received so favorably, was present at a meeting a year ago where I spoke, and our audience at that time was two-thirds men. I talked the suffrage for women, as I always do, as I think it teaches and educates them, and Mrs. Barry followed me from the platform and told me she was not a convert. So to-day, when I heard her talking about equal rights and privileges, I wondered when she had changed her mind, and when she came back I said: “Mrs. Barry, what has come over the spirit of your dream P.” She said: “What could I do? Equal wages are not every- thing. " I had to come to this, but you must remember that all my education and all my prejudices for twenty years were against it, but when I began to think over what the Knights of Labor have done to give others education, I had to come to it.” - Mrs. JoHNs. A communication from the Federation of Labor Unions has been sent to us. To the President and Members of the International Council of Women : At a regular session of the Federation of Labor Unions of the District of Columbia, held on Tuesday evening, the 27th instant, the undersigned committee was appointed to prepare an address to your Council with regard to the attitude of labor organiza- tions respecting acts of intimidation and violence. It is proper to state here that this action was called forth by some remarks made by Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, which we shall hereinafter quote. The Federation of Labor Unions of the District of Columbia sends greetings and wishes you God-speed in the work of securing exact equality for women in every department of labor. The progress made for the advancement of your cause dur- ing the past forty years tells, in unmistakable language, the efficacy of well-directed organization. The thinking women and men of the world are with you. The abo- lition of chattel slavery in the United States was only one step toward freedom. The second and third yet remain to be taken. When the masses shall have been emancipated from industrial bondage, and the political and civil disabilities of woman shall have been removed, then will we be prepared to erect a temple to Free- dom as a fit dwelling for the Goddess of Liberty. As this session of your Council is appropriated to the discussion of industries by representatives of labor organizations, we avail ourselves of the opportunity thus afforded to respectfully refer to the following remarks attributed to Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton in her address of welcome, in the hope of placing labor organizations 164 International Council of Women. in their true light before your Council, and of giving Mrs. Stanton an opportunity of explaining her notions of the object and aims of these organizations. “If the wrongs of our sex are not righted,” said Mrs. Stanton, speaking extemporaneously for the moment, “women will join hands with the labor unions, with the Socialists, and with the Anarchists, and the scenes of the French Revolution will be repeated in this fair land of ours.” We are of the opinion that these words were uttered on the spur of the moment, and without previous investigation on the part of the speaker as to the means employed by organized labor in elevating the masses. We discountenance, and by no means tolerate, acts of violence to person or property on the part of our members, and we have neither affiliation with nor sympathy for associations that do. Our methods are those of peaceable, law-abiding citizens, who believe in the supremacy of the law of the land, and who are desirous of righting wrongs by peaceful methods. The general tendency of labor organizations is to make each member connected with the same a better citizen by educating him into a broader economy and a higher notion of moral excellence and civilization. E. W. OYSTER, JESSE LAWs, ELIZABETH L. EATON, P. L. O'BRIEN, W. C. HAISLUP, Committee. Mrs. JoHNS. The meeting is now adjourned. *Mrs. Stanton's remarks at this point were prophetic. She said: “The next generation of women will not argue half a century patiently, as we have done; but, exasperated with a sense of injustice, will join hands with labor unions, with Nihilists, Socialists, Anarchists, Communists, and the scenes of the French Revolution may be repeated in this fair land of ours.” If the cries of labor are still ignored, another generation of men may be driven to violence also. Let us remember that the Nihilists, the Socialists, the AnarchistS, the Com- munists are each fighting under the despotisms of the Old World for the liberties they can not secure through laws which they have no power to change. E. C. S. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28, 1888. EVENING SESSION. P R O F E S S I O N S . The meeting was called to order by Miss Anthony, who in- troduced the first speaker of the evening, Prof. Rena A. Michaels, of Evanston, Dean of the Northwestern University. WOMEN AS EDUCATORS. Miss MICHAELS. Woman’s work as an educator has been divided into two eras, and the separating line is almost coincident with the emancipation proclamation. In the first era, including all of those eighteen and more centuries of the world’s progress, woman's work as an educator was mainly confined to the home circle, and, at best, to her individual, social, and in- tellectual sphere. It is true that Pindar acknowledged that many of his poetic beauties were gems from the crown of Corinne. It is true, indeed, that Socrates acknowledged that much of his philosophy was drawn from his fair teacher Diatema ; and it is also true that Hypatia expounded the mys- teries of the Neo-Platonic philosophy to the young Greeks; and that many learned women have held positions and chairs in the universities of Southern Europe. The blue-stockings of Dr. Johnson's time were the natural pro- genitors of the strong-minded women of to-day. It is only a little more than half a century ago that a bill was introduced into the legislature of the State of New York praying for an appropriation for the erection of certain seminaries and high schools, and it was urged by the advocates of the measure that those schools might furnish young ladies as teachers in the public schools of that State. But the learned statesmen of that time scouted the idea, as they expressed it, of committing the train- ing of the sons of the State to women, and one very learned statesman im- mortalized himself by saying that “ learning was a very dangerous thing for women; it would draw them from their domestic duties, and, therefore, it would be very pernicious for the interests of the State and society.” If we look over the curriculum of the “ladies' courses,” of which the very kind but conservative gentlemen were directors in that day, we shall be amazed at the work accomplished by the women as educators in every field, who had this delicately laid out “ladies' courses” for their discipline and inspiration. The curriculum and, therefore, the education of women has passed through two phases, or, I Ought to say, that it is now well advanced in the second phase. The first phase would have been characterized by Mr. Mill as the education of the Sentiments. It was believed by those kind, but Very COn- 166 International Council of Women. servative directors, that too much mathematics would be fatal to the health of young women, too much science would unsettle her religious faith, and that any Greek at all would make her masculine, although the Greeks num- bered among their greatest poets a woman ; and it was believed that the study of logic would be fatal to her mind and body. You all know the results. You will remember that in the first period that I have noted here the sphere of woman as an educator was confined to the secondary grades of instruction. It could not be otherwise, for the work that was laid out in those “ladies' courses” that I have mentioned could not by any means fit women for taking places in the higher positions of learning. At that time we see that the very highest position the woman could obtain was that of preceptress. The preceptress meant a little teaching of everything and great deal of scolding of everybody. In fact, the preceptress was the natural headsman or executioner of the institution. It was she who had to do all the scolding of the boys and the girls—for the social code was held, and is still held in some places, that girls must not only be whipped for their own sins, but for the boys' as well. And the portraits of the old-time preceptress, like that of the Yorkshire schoolmaster, will never be effaced from our educa- tional history. Prim, plain to a fault, geometrically plain in face, manner, and dress, she was supposed to be the inveterate foe of everything masculine; and it was very ingenuously believed that she would have gladly banished the masculine gender from good old Mr. Brown's grammar. Michigan Uni- versity opened its doors to women. Then began a new era in the history of woman as an educator. It was then that the golden key was given to her that was to unlock the door to every department of collegiate instruction ; to every profession which leads even to the ballot-box itself. How little they dreamed—those very kind but conservative gentlemen—that they were allow- ing a Trojan horse to be brought within their walls. Taking a bird’s-eye view of what women have done, let us look for a mo- ment at some examples. I think I have been correctly informed that in the Johns Hopkins University very recently ex-President White, of Cornell, mentioned before a class of specialists as the best work in a certain line that they were considering was the work of a lady. I refer to the “Parliaments of Paris,” by Prof. Jane M. Bancroft, formerly Dean of the Woman’s Col- lege of the Northwestern University. And you all know that Prof. Maria Mitchell has been treading the pathways of the stars and discovering new worlds. Then here is my friend, the distinguished professor, Louisa Read Stowell, of the University of Michigan, who is known in two continents as a specialist in microscopy, and is the first woman educated in America to be elected as a member of the Royal Microscopical Society of London. Pro- fessor Stowell has also been elected and honored as a member of one of the most conservative organizations in this country—the Michigan State Phar- maceutical Association. The American Educational Association, the Associa- Professions. 167 -- tion for the Advancement of Science, and the Modern Language Association of America admit women to membership on precisely the same terms as men. How astounded would those New York statesmen have been, for they would not have believed that good prophet, Mrs. Willard, if she had told them that all of these things would take place, and, moreover, that an army of women would be training the sons of this vast Republic in all its schools just fifty years hence; and, further, that women would be admitted to the governing boards of instruction as well, and, that we have School Suffrage for women in twelve States of the Union and this, my friends, all in just fifty years. If I were to be asked this evening to state in what field I think woman's influence as an educator would be especially felt in the next fifty years, I should unhesitatingly reply, the class-room and the press—the class-room, the great under-graduate college for our young men and women to-day, and the press, the great post-graduate college for our young men and women of the future. There is one step further for woman in preparation as an edu- cator; that can not be reached until the best university in this land, the only institution that is founded on the highest and broadest university idea, the Johns Hopkins University, with its magnificent corps of specialists, shall be opened to young women. Miss ANTHONY. I was in hopes the Dean would have heard of a remark that was made at the meeting of the State Superintendents of the Nation, held the other day in the Franklin school-house in this city, by President Elliott, of Harvard University. In his recommendations for the elevation of the public schools of this country, he claimed that the great deterioration in our schools was attributable to the fact that there were too many women teaching. Worse still, not a single superintendent in that assemblage of educators rebuked this insult to the army of noble women devoted to this profession. I wish the Dean had heard that, and answered the President. I have now the pleasure of presenting to you Laura C. Holloway, of Brooklyn, N. Y., who was for many years on the editorial staff of the Daily Aag/e of that city. Mrs. HOLLOWAY. There never was a time since newspapers were made that women were not at work upon them. In fact, the printing-press was discov- ered by a woman. Don't you doubt it, because it is the truth. A Japanese empress, with an unpronounceable name, who lived in the eighth century, really invented the printing-press, and because there wasn’t a man in all the kingdom wise enough to know what to do with it, it was suppressed. There was a woman as long ago as the days of Benjamin Franklin, the wife of his brother James, who, forty-three years before the Revolution, in 1732, published the first paper ever issued in Rhode Island. She was early left a widow, and continued her husband's business, to whom she had been of material assistance while he lived. She was appointed printer to the colony and supplied blanks to all the public offices, printed pamphlets, etc., 168 International Council of Women. at the same time bestowing her special care upon this pioneer paper. The oldest paper in the Revolution, as you know, was edited by the daughter-in- law of a man who was disabled. Her name was Mrs. Mary K. Goddard. Another paper edited during a portion of the Revolutionary war was the Bos- ton AVews-Zeffer, by Mrs. Margaret Draper, and when the city was besieged by the British, hers was the only paper which continued its issue. In New York, Mrs. Mary Holt edited and published the New York /ourma/; she was appointed State printer and in her newspaper did good service in aiding and encouraging the patriots in 1776. And I think the women did good service in the last war, and might in some others; so they might be allowed to vote for that reason, if no other. In Philadelphia, Mrs. Cor- nelia Bradford made a handsome competency in the printing and publishing business in the colonial times, about 1742. Another Philadelphia printer of great ability and reputation was Mrs. Zeuger, who succeeded to her husband's business, including the management of a newspaper previous to 1748. Mrs. Annie K. Green was the colony printer in 1767, and also published the Maryland Gazette. Mrs. Elizabeth Timothee published the Charleston Gazette, in South Carolina, in 1773, and her daughter-in-law carried on the paper after the war. Clementine Bird published the Virginia Gazette during the late colonial days until the outbreak of the war in 1775. Mary Crouch assisted her husband on a paper published in Charleston, S. C., in opposition to the Stamp Act, and continued the issue after his decease. In 1780 she removed to Salem, Mass., taking with her her press and type, where she continued the printing business with much success. Penelope Russell edited a paper called the Censor, at Berlin, Conn., in 1771. She was to a great extent her own compositor, setting up her edito- rials straight from the case, without the use of pen and ink. The Hartford Courant was for two years, 1777–79, edited by Mrs. Watson. This was one of the best papers published in New England until modern times. These are but a few specimens of the early women printers, many of whom have missed historical record; but of the seventy-eight newspapers published in the colonies sixteen were edited by women, and of these sixteen, fourteen were ardent patriots and eloquent champions of liberty and equal rights. Twenty-five years ago the modern movement in journalism commenced. Very few women, and those under exceptional circumstances, were to be found in offices thirty years ago; the most prominent journalist at that time was Margaret Fuller, who was so long associated with Horace Greeley in the New York Tribune, and, strange as it may seem, one of the first newspaper offices in the United States to employ women in any capacity was that of the Guardian, published at Paterson, N.J., whose editor not only engaged women compositors, but had for several years a forewoman, who also took entire charge of the paper, making all the selections, judging of all matter inserted whenever the regular editor was absent. One young lady who was graduated from the Professions. 169 office of the Paterson Guardian is now engaged in the responsible position of a make-up in New York.” It is a fallacious and popular idea that women have usurped any of the OC- cupations of men. The real truth is that, through the changes of civiliza- tion, men have crowded women out of their places. Everybody knows that women have been bakers, brewers and butter-makers, weavers and spin- ners since all time, and that it is because they have been pushed out of all their old accustomed places that they are now prominent as teachers, reform- ers, and newspaper writers, trying, by example and precept, to help society adjust the new order of things with equity and right feeling. Miss ANTHONY. The next speaker was the first woman admitted to the National Medical Association of America, 1876, at Philadelphia–Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson, of Chicago. WOMAN IN MEDICINE. Dr. STEVENSON. One well-authenticated fact in history establishes a precedent. “Do you wish to be great P Then be great with a true greatness, which is knowing the facts of nature and being able to use them. Do you wish to be strong P Then be strong with a true strength, which is knowing the facts of nature and being able to use them. Do you wish to be wise P Then be wise with a true wisdom, which is knowing the facts of nature and being able to use them. Do you wish to be free ? Then be free with a true freedom, which is, again, knowing the facts of nature and being able to use them.” Such are the words of Charles Kingsley, and such is my message to all women—viz., the great value of the habit of mind which the study of natural science can develop. Like Charles Kingsley, I have watched reform- ers in their endeavors to put society into some sort of a freedom mill in order to grind out a regeneration. Like him, I have observed that the kind of flour that comes out depends for the most part upon the kind of grain put in, rather than upon the make of the machine. The great problem, then, is to get grain, and again the words of this gifted author serve my purpose, except that where he uses the word men I use the word women. “What do I mean by good grain P Good women, honest women, accurate women, thoughtful women, patient women, Self- restraining women, fair women, modest women, women who are aware of their own vast ignorance compared with the vast amount there is to be learned in such a universe as this, women who are accustomed to look at both sides of a question, and instead of making up their minds in haste like bigots and lunatics, wait like wise women for more facts and more thought about the facts—in one word, women who have acquired just the habit of mind which the study of natural science can develop and must have, for without it there is no use studying natural science.” And the woman who has not that habit of mind, if she meddle with science, will merely become a * See “History of Woman Suffrage,” Vol. I. chap. ii., “Woman in Newspapers.” 12 170 International Council of Women. quack and a charlatan, only fit to get her bread as a spirit-rapper or inventor of infallible pills. This is the great danger that more than any other threat- ens the advancement of women in medicine. No outside forces can prevent their attaining the highest eminence, although outside opposition is by no means overcome, as we shall see, but the forces which are to be dreaded most are those which women themselves may generate. The majority of men, notwithstanding all their advantage of conditions, are lacking in this scientific habit of mind. What, then, can be expected of woman, to whom science has been an abhorrence to be shunned or an enigma not to be answered 2 It is to this slovenly, unscientific habit of thought which is hers by tradition and education, that woman owes her easy conquest by quackery. Besides this inherited habit of mind, woman’s economic dependence favors her espousal of the superficial. The easy systems of med- icine commend themselves to her, because of the more speedy financial returns. Woman’s personal poverty stands equally in the way of the patient accumulation of facts. The public's love for infallible pills on the one hand and her need of money on the other kills the scientific spirit, and never since the day that Bacon taught us the meaning of science have there been committed so many sins in the name of science. With the word Science for a prefix or a suffix, any moral or intellectual monstrosity is floated out on the popular tide as a system of medicine. I am glad to be able to say that these pseudo-scientists are not all women, but I should fail in my duty toward women, did I not use this opportunity to plead with them against lending themselves to this degeneration of science. There is but one way to know anything; that way is by close, patient, all-absorbing study with your ear close to the heart of nature and your finger upon her pulse. Medical science, which, in its widest sense, includes all natural science, can not be learned by calling public meetings and talking it over. Science lies not that way. So I would urge upon women who are contemplating the study of medicine to choose that school in which the very longest, instead of the shortest, course of study is prescribed, for the very longest is all too short compared with all there is to be learned. Let such women put away from them the temptation of money-getting and great popularity. The women who have not the strength of purpose to do this had far better turn their en- ergies into commercial channels; the altar of science can never be con- verted into a bargain counter. Beside this economic state of dependence we also find that the medical schools for women are poor. There is scarcely $1oo, ooo worth of property belonging to any one of them, while the famous medical colleges of the world count their wealth by the million. As I have stood within the portals of those immense structures of the Old World I have wondered if the time would ever come when women could command such wealth for the study of science, or, better still, could be admitted to full privileges in such institutions. - Professions. 171 Some of those doors are turning. France and Switzerland grant full degrees and England permits examinations. It is my judgment that women should unite in their efforts to open the institutions already existing rather than to call into being any more sickly, starving colleges such as we see attempting to teach medicine all over the country. It kills the spirit of science when the medical school becomes a commer- cial enterprise, and the poverty of those Schools compels them to make money, so the main requirement of the student is ability to pay the fee, and the professor is no authority in anything but the fee. The greatest hindrance in the way of medical science to-day in America is the ex- istence of these commercial medical colleges. The same spirit is creep- ing into the schools for women. At first there were so few women who cared to study medicine there was no temptation for the medical tradesman, but just now he is getting warmly interested in the medical education of woman—it is a new method of advertising—therefore very precious. The way for women to save themselves from this cupidity is to make their schools so wealthy they can live without student’s fees, or else to find entrance to the already existing institutions. I know of no better way in which women of large fortunes can serve their sex than by making the impoverished medi- cal colleges for women independent of patronage and at the same time com- pel patronage by being able to pay for the very best scientific teaching in the profession. We thus see how closely allied are our two greatest foes, poverty and quackery; but the physician, man or woman, who has once attained what Charles Kingsley calls the scientific habit of mind, could not be a quack if he would, and would not if he could. It would be a comparatively easy task for me to tell you how many women physicians there are and how much money they are making. Suffice it to say there are about one thousand registered physicians. Some are saving $100 a month, and others are making the two ends meet on $50,000 a year. But a true friend is one who warns of danger; so I have called attention to what I consider our greatest danger–sham Science, the craze or fad of the day. And now one word concerning what medical women are doing, and I am done. In the first place, let me call your attention to the fact that a few young girls, inexperienced, poor, trammeled by the narrow policy of the societies that have sent them, have done more, as doctors, to westernize the East, occidizing the Orient, or, if you would rather say it, Christianizing the heathen, than have all the mints of missionary money that have been sent hitherto. Why? Because they administered to the people upon the plane of their necessities. They have gone to work in the order of nature. There is scarcely a land under heaven where woman as physician is not found, and for a hundred years to come the supply will not equal the demand. Next to this great question of the missionary doctor, I’d like to call the attention of this Council to the institutions in which women are detained, 172 International Council of Women. either for crime, insanity, or disease. While I do not approve of institu- tions, and wish the day might come when human beings shall not be herded under the same roof for any cause, while I believe that institutional life tends to beat out of the individual the last spark of real dignity, that it simply means that the weak and vicious are at the mercy of the strong and vicious, who are protected by the name of charity or law—yet, as institutions do exist, the public ought to insist upon it that wherever the sick, mentally or bodily, are detained, whether the institution be public or private, physicians, not politicians or professional philanthropists, should have full charge. The inhumanities of institutional life, even in this age of the world, are heart-sickening. Business men run institutions at so much a head—the smaller per capita the greater the success of the institutions—while the fact that the people inside are sick is the last fact considered. After the public has demanded that physicians, not commercial men, shall treat the sick, let us demand that wherever sick women are detained by law or charity these women, as physicians, shall also be retained by both law and charity. Here is practical work for women who are longing for a career. Go back to your homes and visit your town, county, and State institutions; especially make a call at your county poor-house, and look at the pitiful sights in the cells of the maniacs there detained, and, after you have asked God to forgive you for the neglect, lose no time in finding and appointing a woman physician to care for your unfortunate sisters, but do not stop here. After she is appointed See to it that she is paid just what a man would be paid. In this regard the West is in advance of the East. I know one of the finest women in the world, and a good doctor, too, for I helped to educate her, who is doing a man's work at Worcester, and yet her salary is the lowest in the institution, and she is kept from all pro- motion. Dr. Alice Bennett has full charge of the female department of the East- ern State Hospital for the Insane, at Norristown, Pa. Many of our asylums are placing the women's wards entirely under the care of women. Eighteen in- stitutions are now employing women. The time is not far distant when public sentiment will demand that all insane women shall be cared for by women. Then there is the hospital question. This has been the Gibraltar of our opposition. But continual dropping does wear away the stone. The largest general hospital in the West has already had two women as Internes. The third and fourth are awaiting vacancies. Just as I left Chicago a petition from the doctors had been sent into the governing board protesting against the admis- sion of these last two women, who have gained the appointments by rigid com- petition. One of the doctors was heard to say, “Why, next October there will be three women in the hospital, and there are only nine physicians altogether l’’ I thought one-third a very fair proportion, particularly as two- thirds of the patients are women. Men consider they get their best training in large hospitals. They sacrifice time, money, and no end of influence to obtain these positions. The experience is equally good for women, and, as Professions. 173 women are taxed to support these various hospitals, both public and private, we are only the daughters of our fathers when we ask for personal representation. Surgery, too, has warned us not to take the sacred knife or ligature in our nerveless grasp ; but it must have taken a great deal of nerve for Jael to drive that nail through Sisera’s head and not into her own fingers; that same nerve, educated, might tie an artery or perform an abdominal section. I could fill a book with just the names of opportunities in medicine for women. Why, there are 60, ooo post-office towns in the United States, every one of which could support a woman physician. Wherever the United States mail goes the female is sure to follow. Then there are the great fields of ethics, pharmacy, and dentistry, which are comparatively untouched. But the first good of woman in medicine comes to woman herself. She has been made to believe that she was a special order of creation and not subjected to the same laws; that she was going to conquer by intuition or inspiration, or some other extraordinary method; and when she finds that she can conquer nature only by obeying her, then, for the first time, she learns her lesson. Professor Huxley once told his class that he knew of no special order of creation unless it were that grouse were created with special reference to the adjournment of Parliament on the 12th of August. If, for no other purpose, the study of medicine has been invaluable to woman in showing her where she belongs; that she is neither an angel nor a demon, but a fairly well-made half of mankind—no better and no worse than the other half. Woman will never be emancipated from any bondage until she learns her own nature; not from books, not from men, but from her own mother—nature. I implore you, then, not to take things second-hand. Go back to your mother. She is so kind when you are in earnest. She never gives stones for bread save when you are pretending to be hungry. A violin solo was then rendered by Miss Maud Powell, a lovely girl of seventeen, tastefully dressed in a delicate shade of pink silk. She played with wonderful skill and expression selec- tions from Faust, remarkable alike for their difficulty and beauty, and completely entranced her audience. Standing there unconscious of her power and her charms, she seemed the personification of music and grace, and when she vanished it was like waking from a heavenly dream. - Miss ANTHON.Y. You will now listen to Mrs. Ada M. Bittenbender, of Nebraska. WOMAN IN I, A.W. Mrs. BITTENBENDER. The first woman attorney-at-law in America was Margaret Brent, of Maryland. On order of court, made January 3, 1648, she was admitted to the bar as the attorney of Lord Baltimore, the Lord Proprietary of the Province. History records that she exercised her attor- n 174 International Council of Women. neyship with great energy and ability. Before her admission, however, she had not been a regular student of law. The first American woman to be admitted to the legal profession on proper prosecution of law studies was Arabella A. Mansfield, of Mount Pleasant, Iowa. This was in June, 1869. Since her admission nearly one hundred other American women have been admitted, two of whom are colored. A large number are law school grad- uates. The first American law school to open its doors to women was that of Washington University at St. Louis. This school granted the application of Phoebe W. Couzins for admission in December, 1868. Now, nearly all law schools of the United States freely admit women. Among those still refusing are the law departments of Yale, Harvard, Columbian, and George- town Universities, and Columbia College. - As to the relative standing of the sexes as students in law schools, Hon. Henry Wade Rogers, Dean of the University of Michigan Department of Law, in a letter dated March I Ith, says: “ The women who have attended the law school have compared favorably in the matter of scholarship with the men. Some of the women who have been in attendance have been very bright students, indeed, while a few have been quite poor. The question is not, if you will allow me to say so, whether women can acquire a knowledge of law. They are just as capable of acquiring that knowledge as men are. Their failure at the bar, if they do fail, will not be due to any want of ability to grasp legal principles, but it will be due to their unfitness in other respects for the contentions of the forum.” Hon. Henry Booth, Dean of the Union College of Law, Chicago, reports the standing of women in scholarship as that of a fair average, and says: “We discover no difference in the capacity of the sexes to apprehend and apply legal principles. We welcome ladies to the School and regard their presence an advantage in pro- moting decorum and good order.” Women of this country, on application, are now generally admitted to the legal profession without objection, the statutes being liberally construed for the purpose of their admission where there has been no special enactment. When admitted they are entitled to practice before all courts, State and national, the same as men are. Of their admission in the early days of the innovation, Ellen A. Martin, of the bar of Illinois, in an article on “Admission of Women to the Bar,’’ published in the Chicago Zaw Zimes, 1886, says: “Women were admitted on their first application, without anything in the law specially requir- ing it, in Iowa, Missouri, Michigan, North Carolina, Utah, District of Colum- bia, Maine, Ohio, Wisconsin, Kansas, Connecticut, Nebraska, Washing- ton Territory, and to the United States circuit and district courts in Illi- nois, Iowa, and Texas. In Wisconsin and Ohio, where, after some women had been admitted, others were refused by other judges, the legislatures at once passed laws forbidding their exclusion. In Illinois, California, Minne- Sota, Massachusetts, Oregon, New York, the United States Supreme Court Professions. 175 and Court of Claims, the courts would not admit women until laws were passed providing for it, and in all cases, the legislatures promptly passed them. In Congress the law was delayed for a time, the Judiciary Com- mittee of the Senate holding that no special legislation was necessary, that the United States courts already had sufficient authority to admit women. In Pennsylvania the admission of women was finally secured under the origi- nal law passed in 1834 for the admission of ‘persons.' The first time the matter could be acted upon by the supreme court of Pennsylvania it acted favorably.” Women, anxious for admission, were the first to advocate these enabling acts. It is especially interesting to read of the able efforts made by Myra Bradwell for admission in Illinois, Belva A. Lockwood in securing an act of Congress to enable women to be admitted to the United States Supreme Court, and of the twelve years' struggle of Carrie Burnham Kilgore for admission to the courts of Pennsylvania. Under this innovation twenty-one law firms have been established, husband and wife constituting the firm. Frequent applications are made by young women to become students in the offices of women who are in the practice. Many are working their way into the profession—some as stenographers and type-writers in law offices, others as court reporters. Clara S. Foltz and Laura de Force Gordon, of California, won legal repute before admission to the bar by the able handling of their mandamus case to compel the opening of the Hastings College of Law to women. Clara S. Foltz and Helen M. Gougar delivered able legal addresses before the stu- dents of the Union College of Law, in 1886. Catherine G. Waugh, a graduate of the Union College of Law, is professor of commercial law in the Rockford (Ill.) Commercial College. Several have received court appoint- ments as examiners in chancery and examiners of applicants for admission to the bar, and have acted acceptably in these capacities. Emma Haddock, of Iowa City, in June, 1878, was appointed by the Supreme court of Iowa to examine students of the State University for graduation and admission to the bar. She was reappointed for two years following. Women have been elected as justices of the peace, and are capably acting in that capacity in Kansas and Wyoming Territory. - In 1884 Phoebe W. Couzins was appointed Deputy Marshal for the Eastern District of Missouri. In 1887, at the death of her father (the Marshal), she was appointed by Associate Justice Miller, ad interim, to fill his place, and re- ceived many encomiums for the excellent manner in which she discharged the various duties. º Several able articles have been written for law journals by women of this country. Of books, M. B. R. Shay, of Streator, Ill., is author of “Stu- dents’ Guide to Common Law Pleading” (published in 1881). Of this work, Hon. R. M. Benjamin, Dean of Law Faculty, and Hon. A. G. Karr, Professor of Pleading, of Law Department of the Illinois Wesleyan Univer- 176 International Council of Women. sity, say, as published in Callaghan & Company's annual catalogue of law books: ‘‘We have examined with considerable care ‘Shay’s Questions on Common Law Pleading,’ and can cheerfully recommend them to students as admirably adapted to guide them to a thorough knowledge of the prin- ciples of pleading as laid down by those masters of the system, Stephen, Gould, and Chitty.” Mrs. Shay graduated from the Bloomington Law School in 1879. She won the prize of $100 for the best examination in her class and was the valedictorian. Lelia J. Robinson, of Suffolk (Mass.) bar, is author of “Law Made Easy— a Book for the People’’ (published in 1886). Of this work, Hon. Charles T. Russell, professor in Boston University Law School, says: “For the end proposed, the information and instruction of the popular mind in the ele- ments of law, civil and criminal, I know of no work which surpasses it. It is comprehensive and judicious in scope, accurate in statement, terse, vigor- ous, simple, and clear in style. My gratification in this work is none the less that its author is the first lady Bachelor of Laws graduated from our Bos- ton University Law School, and that she has thus early and fully vindicated her right to the highest honors of the school accorded her at her gradua- tion.” Chief Justice Stone, of Alabama, who has been on the bench there for forty years, recently gave a most enthusiastic opinion of this book. Many commendations have been received from brother lawyers by the authors of these works. Myra Bradwell is editor of the Chicago Lega/AWews, one of the most noted law journals of this country, which she founded in 1868. She is the presi- dent of one of the largest law-book publishing companies in the United States. Catharine V. Waite, of the Illinois bar, edits the Chicago Zaw 7%mes, which she established in 1886, and publishes quarterly “for the discussion, from a legal standpoint, of the great questions which interest the commu- nity.” This journal is receiving widespread recognition for its legal worth. Bessie Bradwell Helmer, also of the Illinois bar, edited the last twelve vol- umes of “Bradwell's Appellate Court Reports.” She was the valedictorian of her law class, that of Union College of Law of 1882. The first association of women in law is called “The Equity Club.” This was organized in October, 1886, by students and graduates of the law department of Michigan University, having for its object “the interchange of encouragement and friendly counsel between law students and practi- tioners.” It is international in scope. Each member is required to con- tribute a yearly letter “giving an account of individual experiences, thoughts on topics of general interest, and helpful suggestions” for publica- tion and distribution among members of the association. Last year sixteen letters were contributed. The Equity Club has a membership of thirty-two ; Letitia L. Burlingame, president ; Martha K. Pearce, corresponding Sec- retary. Professions. 177 Another association of women, recently organized, is the “Woman's Inter- national Bar Association,” having for its object: first, to open law schools to women ; Second, to remove all disabilities to admission of women to the bar, and to secure their eligibility to the bench; third, to disseminate knowl- edge concerning woman's legal status; fourth, to secure better legal condi- tions for women. President, Catharine V. Waite, Chicago, Ill. ; General Secretary, Ada M. Bittenbender, Lincoln, Neb.; General Treasurer, J. Ellen Foster, Clinton, Iowa; Secretaries—Great Britain, Eliza Orme, London ; Italy, Lidia Poet, Turin ; Russia, Evreninova, St. Petersburg ; Swit- zerland, E. Kempin, Zurich ; Hawaii, Almeda E. Hitchcock, Hilo ; United States, Lelia J. Robinson, Boston. Women are welcomed as members of bar associations established by our brothers in the profession. But few have availed themselves of this privi- lege. For various reasons quite a number of women admitted have not, so far, identified themselves with law practice. Others have allowed themselves to be drawn into temperance and other reform movements; but the greater portion at once settled down to follow their chosen pursuit with no devia- tion, and are ripening into able, experienced lawyers, and winning their fair share of clientage. Some confine themselves mainly to an office practice, Seldom or never appearing in public; others prefer court practice. Those who enter the forum are cordially countenanced by brother lawyers, and ac- ceptably received before court and jury. As a rule they are treated with the utmost courtesy by the bench, the bar, and other court officers. Woman's influence in the court-room as counsel is promotive of good in more than one respect. Invectives against opposing counsel, so freely made use of in some courts, are seldom indulged in when woman stands as the opponent. And in social impurity cases, language, in her presence, becomes more chaste, and the moral tone thereby elevated perceptibly. The rule, “No smoking in the court-room,” is better observed. But there should be one more innovation brought into general vogue— that of the mixed jury system. When we shall have women both as lawyers and jurors to assist in the trial of cases, then and not till then will woman's influence for good in the administration of justice be fully felt. In Wyoming and Washington Territories the mixed jury system has been tried and found perfectly practicable and highly satisfactory to all except evil-doers. English women began the study of law with a view of practicing before American women. The Aritish Medica/ /ourma/ is quoted as saying, in 1867, that “more English women seek for admission to the bar than for en- trance into medical practice.” But while those who have sought have been permitted to qualify for and practice as attorneys-at-law and solicitors in chancery, they have not been permitted to become barristers-at-law and ex- ercise the rights of that rank in the prosecution of their cases. The reason for this lies in the fact that women are denied admission to the four Inns of 178 International Council of Women. Court, which are the only places where barristers are trained and ranked. These Inns of Court are voluntary societies, from whose power to reject ap- plications for membership there is no appeal. Of legal works by our English sisters, only two have come to my notice, “Trial by Jury, the Birthright of the People of England,” by Arabella Shedden (published in 1865), and “A Brief Summary, in Plain Language, of the Most Important Laws of England Concerning Women,” by Barbara L. S. Bodichon (published in 1869). These are reputed able works. “Woman and the Practice of the Law,” by Lidia Poet, our Italian sister, “discusses the question of woman’s right to practice law as it has been pre- sented recently in Italy.” Under “ the educational law '' of 1876, which “opened the doors of the University of Italy to women, and thereby enabled them to obtain academic degrees in law,” Signora Poet “completed the university curriculum in law, and having assiduously attended courts, and otherwise complied with legal requirements, was admitted to the Society of the Bar of Turin.” But her sex precludes her from practicing. In speak- ing of her case, the American Zaw Review says: “ In view, however, of the strong support which the claim of the Signora Poet has found among the best and ablest lawyers in Italy, we think it likely that the ability, zeal, and learning displayed by the author of this pamphlet (' Woman and the Prac- tice of Law '), if turned in the direction of amendatory legislation, would put a woman’s right to practice law in Italy beyond cavil.” I am told that Signora Poet, while waiting for legal recognition of her right to practice, is Occupying a professorship of law in the University of Bologna. A few years since an attempt was made to admit women to the legal pro- fession in Russia. A Russian lady, writing on the subject, says: “After the reforms in our judiciary and the establishment of the order of advocates, some law offices employed women. Professors were invited to lecture on law before the women courses at St. Petersburg, and some women went abroad to study the science in foreign universities. But the government forbade lawyers to accept their services as clerks, and the movement was nipped in the bud. * * * The law society of St. Petersburg counts among its mem- bers Miss Evreninova, who took her degree of Doctor of Laws at Paris.” But because of her sex she is denied the right to practice. - In gleaning facts to report to this honorable Council what has been accom- plished by women in the legal profession, I addressed the ministers of for- eign legations in the United States, asking about woman's opportunities for studying and following this profession in the countries represented by them. From the answers which gave information I extract the following: “Women in France may attend the lectures given at the law schools, but, so far, they can not be admitted as attorneys, and, therefore, can not practice the legal profession.” “Women are admitted to the law schools of Sweden and Norway ; but, so far as known to me, no demand for admission to Professions. 179 the legal profession has as yet been made by a woman in the said countries.” “In the Austrian-Hungarian empire women are not admitted to the law schools, and can, therefore, not exercise the legal profession.’’’ ‘‘In Den- mark women are not admitted to the legal profession, and so far as I know no female student ever frequented our only law school at the University of Copenhagen.” “There is neither a case of a woman entering the law schools nor following the legal profession in Brazil.” “Never heard of any woman having graduated as a lawyer in Mexico.” “In Germany women are—at least at some universities—admitted to the regular courses and lec- tures; but they are, so far as my knowledge reaches, never admitted to the exercise of the legal profession.” “There is no prohibition in the Argen- tine Republic in regard to the admission of women to the law schools or to the practice of law, but up to the present time none have been admitted to either.” “I know only of one Swiss lady who studied law, Mrs. E. Kempin, who was a student of the University of Zurich from 1884 to 1887, and who acquired the title of a doctor juris uſriusque with great distinction in 1887. But the laws of the canton of Zurich prevent Mrs. Kempin from entering the bar of this canton. Her address is Frau Doctor Kempin, Flun- turn, Zurich, Switzerland.” “I do not know of any women having been admitted to the legal profession in the Hawaiian Kingdom, though I do not think there is any legal obstacle to such admission. A young woman from Hawaii, the daughter of one of our circuit judges, is studying law at the University of Michigan with the view of practicing law in Hawaii.” We are anticipating that among the results of our “Woman's Interna- tional Bar Association '' will be concerted action to open the doors of law schools still closed against women and to secure the right of admission to all ranks of the profession for our legal sisterhood in other lands. We believe women are not only as capable of learning and applying legal principles as men, but also are as capable of practicing successfully in the court-room, and are as well fitted by nature for doing so as men. This we know is a very advanced position to take, but are not women as well qualified for judging of minute details as men? Are not women as persistent in efforts? Are they not endowed with as much power of endurance P Great physical strength is not required. Is not woman's sense of justice as fully developed P Is not her intuitive faculty as alert P. If so, are not these the essential qual- ities required to fit one for the highest and truest practice of the legal pro- fession ? There has not been time enough yet for a woman to develop into an Erskine or Burke, an O'Connell or Curran, a Webster or Choate. But few men have done so if history correctly records. Woman has made a fair beginning and is determined to push on and upward, keeping pace with her brother along the way until with him she shall have finally reached the highest pinnacle of legal fame. 180 International Council of Women. Miss ANTHONY. The next speaker is the Rev. Ada C. Bowles, of Massa- chusetts, who will tell us of WOMAN IN THE MINISTRY. Mrs. BOWLES. Woman in the ministry is not a modern innovation, as many think, nor is it an intrusion of woman upon a sphere of action sacred to the masculine half of humanity. According to the world's most ancient records, the first student of moral ethics and preacher of the truth thus learned was a woman. This primitive school of divinity was established in a garden called Eden, which a man was commanded to “dress and keep ’’ as a task fitted to his muscular ability. But the Perfect Wisdom said “it is not good that the man should be alone,” and made him a “helpmeet,” adapted to lift his thoughts from the seen and known to the unseen and un- known. Following the significant fable, this woman “help-meet ’’’ ‘‘saw'' that the “knowledge of good and evil would make one wise.” Eagerly she plucked the golden apple of this royal knowledge, ate of it, and with true, conjugal love called her husband and gave him a share. But, alas ! his capacity for swallowing a saving truth was too limited even as now, and the apple would not down, but held ever since in his throat, explains much of his subsequent behavior. Ever-blessed mother Eve, however, digested and assimilated her apple, and thereby was made to see more clearly the moral distinctions by which the race rises to higher levels. Continuing the reading of the early history of the race, we note that in spite of hedging law and custom woman continued to use her prerogative of leading upward in song, prophecy, and teaching or preaching, as we now call it. Just how Huldah opened for herself the school of the prophets and made it Co-educational we can not tell, but we know she ranked all spiritual direc- tors in a certain national crisis. And the sermon of King Lemuel's mother, in the last chapter of Proverbs, is unsurpassed as an exhortation to high manhood and womanhood. Then came woman's emancipator, Jesus of Naz- areth. Women became his eager pupils, his ardent disciples and preachers, side by side with the men he had called to the work. Paul mentions many of them by name as his beloved co-laborers in the Lord—Priscilla, Phebe, Persis, Tryphena, and Tryphosa. The house of Phillip gave four daughters to the Christian ministry, we are also told. Not only did Empress Helena, by the conversion of her son, make Christianity the religion of Rome, but other royal mothers, wives and sisters brought England, Spain, France, Rus- sia, Hungary, and Poland under Christian rule. Through the Middle Ages princesses of the blood sought the cloister, that by learning they might serve the religion they so prized. Women read Hebrew, wrote Greek, published and defended theses, and harangued popes in Latin. Eloquent young girls preached crusades to Christian princes. One of the three best ancient copies of the Scriptures is the work of a pious Greek woman of the fifth century. Professions. 181 Though Apasia could surpass the orators she made, including Pericles; though Diotima could teach Socrates the divine philosophy, and Cornelia be counted the first philosopher in Rome, the level of womanhood was little affected thereby. We read that woman was the last work of creative skill which pro- ceeded in orderly steps from the lowest up to the highest and most per- fect form. Yet even now are to be found men who imply in pulpit and platform utterances the absurdity that God in making woman reversed the whole order of creation that he might make a good cook and nurse for man. By virtue of her creation, her natural endowments, her historic record, woman might claim the exclusive right to the pulpit now that she possesses equal educational advantages, but she is more modest than this. She asks only an equal encouragement and opportunity to enter its long-closed doors and speak the message in her heart. Shall ecclesiastical courts forbid still, and upon what ground 2 I do not claim to be very logical, but when statisticians give us such facts as these I will mention, and print them for the eyes of all women, I am simply dazzled by their brilliant conclusion that men, and men only, are to the pul- pit born. Hear this: 95 per cent. of the unchaste are men; 95 per cent. of the drunkards are men ; 95 per cent. of criminals are men; 75 per cent. of the paupers are men; ergo, all preachers of purity, sobriety, honesty, indus- try, and high morality should be men. “Logic is logic, that's all I say.” The census of 188o gives but 165 ordained women in a population of 60,000,ooo. The only evangelical denominations which have ordained women to their ministry are the Protestant Methodist and the Christian (Bap- tist). The first of these has ordained but one, Annie H. Shaw. Twenty-five years ago the Universalist denomination ordained Olympia Brown, after her graduating from its theological schools. Thirty-five years ago Antoinette L. Brown was ordained as an independent preacher, but not by authority of the Unitarian denomination, which, later, has ordained a small number. The present Year Book of the Universalist Church gives thirty-three women, nearly all of whom, as well as those in the Unitarian Church, are settled and successful pastors. The immorality of our great centers of population is a growing menace to the peace of society, and how to deal with it, an ever-increasing problem. I look to a consecrated ministry to solve it. Not by scores, but by hundreds, should women, who now constitute three-quarters of our churches, knock at the doors of theological Seminaries and demand entrance that they may prepare for the ministry. Miss ANTHONY. I now have the pleasure of presenting to you Mrs. Martha R. Field, of New Orleans, who is better known to the readers of the daily Picayune of that city, as “Catharine Cole.” Mrs. FIELD. It is my honor to represent at this Council an association 182 International Council of Women. which was founded on sentiment. The Woman’s International Press Asso- ciation should have members on every country weekly and great daily news- paper in all civilized lands, with opportunities for influencing millions of readers in all progressive and philanthropic works. The ancient sentiment of patriotism is yielding to the modern sentiment of philanthropy. The one means love of fatherland—the other of mankind. In ancient days, when a man was wrecked on a foreign coast, he was either murdered, enslaved, or held for ransom. Nowadays, in this country, he is welcomed to a homestead and all the rights of an American citizen, with the Army, the Navy, and the great heart of the American people to sustain him. That is a distinct mark of progress on the dial of time. The best that modern science has done is to promote the democratic ten- dency everywhere. Having determined that one human being is the brother of all others in the eyes of a common Father, we are beginning here in America, to recognize the other fact, that a distinction of sex is not a neces- sary distinction of capacity or ability in the active work of the world. We of the New World are conscious of the fact that the most serious problems of the Old World have been relegated to us for solution. The energetic, self-dependent women of this country are finding employment in every branch of industry and commerce. It merely happens that in journalism we have had the best opportunity to write our names in enduring letters and to command respect instead of soliciting toleration. The advancement of women in the world everywhere has been through all ages coeval with the most glorious triumphs of civilization. Every advance women make here is met with a ready response in Europe, or vice versa. No territorial lines divide the common heart of womanhood or bar that touch of nature that makes the whole world kin. We in America have led, and are willing to follow ; and we gladly invite the counsel of foreign journalists in regard to the practical duties of our profession. Woman in journalism has come to stay. What are her duties, then P What has mankind the right to expect from her toward the betterment of current literature ? First of all, good taste—the second conscience of the sex—grace, style, every artistic attraction that is not meretricious ; second, in logical order, but first in im- portance, purity. We have not gone into journalism to take the place of the politician, the statesman, the savant, but to spread the influence of Christian firesides—the aims of a broad philanthropy, over the modern world. Hundreds of women belong to this great Press Association. Some of them are here to-night, and many are far from here at work by busy desks in the sweet security of their homes or in the equal security of their newspaper offices. They may or they may not wear on their breasts the white, the red, or the yellow ribbon of the new legion of honor, but wherever they are their pens and services should be dedicated to just the fine and simple sentiments of honesty and purity. Professions. 183 The following paper is from Marion A. McBride, of Boston, Secretary of the Woman’s International Press Association : WOMEN IN JOURNALISM. The prominent position taken by women at present is due to the pressure of public opinion, which has forced many into the front rank who have for years worked quietly and devotedly in the background. It is not due to any paramount demand ; but, like a panorama, where every figure has its place, woman's turn has come. Underlying the social structure, touching life in all its relations, woman has ever held a place which was peculiarly her own ; but broader education, more of physical culture, a general coming out into the sunshine of the world, brings woman into prominence as never before. Women in journalism have made a good record. * * * In 1772 Clementine Reid printed and edited the Virginia Gazette, a paper devoted to the Colonial cause, and two years later Mrs. H. Boyle started a Royalist paper bearing the same name. Mrs. Reid’s paper was the first in the United States to publish the Declaration of Independence. In the face of these facts journalism was not considered a profession open to women. Since 1850 women have been editing departments in weekly papers with success. For the past twenty years they have been placed upon the repor- torial and correspondent staff of daily papers, until to-day it is the excep- tion to find any paper—daily, weekly, or monthly—without a woman doing either editorial or reportorial work. There seems to be a pervading feeling that certain things can be done better by a woman than by a man, and the press, highly sensitive to public sentiment, meets this demand for news and feminine views of affairs by securing the work direct from those interested. When women take up any line of business they are more isolated in their work than men in the same position. To meet the need of this isolation, to render more complete the work of women by putting them in close communication, one with another, the Woman’s National Press Asso- ciation was formed in New Orleans May 13, 1885. The object of the asso- ciation, as defined in the platform, is “to provide a medium of communica- tion between the journalists of the country, securing all the benefits, that result from organized effort. Such information as is continually needed by writers will always be rendered available, and new avenues will be opened to individuals for journalistic work. Innumerable benefits arise from mutual help and encouragement. One aim of the association is to forward the in- terests of the working women of this country in every possible way.” This association has grown rapidly from the date of organization, and May 13, 1887, its character was changed from National to International, with the following officers: President, Mrs. Eliza J. Nicholson, New Orleans, La. ; Vice-Presidents, Mrs. Augusta Chadz, Melbourne, Australia; Mrs. E. J. Bocock, Longreach, Brisbone, Queensland ; Miss Mary M. Mullen, London ; Secretary, Marion A. McBride, Boston, Mass. ; Honorary Members, Mrs. - w 184 International Council of Women. Mary A. Livermore, Clara Barton, Mrs. Frank Leslie. This was the first com- prehensive grouping of women national in character, because its mem- bers were drawn from many States; its interests thrown like a net-work at once over all women’s work, it became the magic chain to draw forth reports of woman’s achievements. Women, scarce strong enough to stand alone, have been helped into successful work. The International Association has a membership of nearly 4oo, scattered over the United States, Mexico, and parts of Europe. To the loving work of Mary Clement Leavitt, of Boston, now on a tour around the world for the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, is due the complete international character of an organization which is doing good for women, society, the home, school, and State, with hundreds of workers scattered over the world in close telegraphic communication, bound together by common interests. The Woman’s Press Associations, strong, practical, and broad, as they stand to-day, are the helpers of every good cause, the friends of every one in need, the open door through which all womanly work can pass into public sym- pathy, the avenue through which educational work can be enlarged until the grand plans of the grandest workers are accomplished facts. To managing editors of leading papers of the United States and to the officers of the Asso- ciated Press we are deeply indebted for many acts of kindness, for help when- ever asked, in connection with woman’s work in journalism. Miss ANTHONY. I am happy now to introduce to you a representative of the National Press Association, Mrs. Aurelia Hadley Mohl. AD IDEA AND ITS RESULTS. y Mrs. MoHL. “Occasionally,” says Carlyle, “God lets loose a thinker on the world ; then there is a commotion.” This is equally true of an idea. Brain and hand labor are coexistent with humanity. Men and women have fulfilled, individually, the doom to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow from its utterance until now. But organized labor is the idea of the nineteenth century. The many skeins of the labor rope are being twisted into a cable, which already nearly girdles the earth, and which is destined to crush its life out should hate twist the threads, or to bind humanity in per- petual unity if love shall twine the cords. - Organization, like other ideas, grew up from what we are pleased to call the lower stratum of Society. Each century shows the growth and fruitage of some idea. Now we see the stirring of the grand thought of brotherhood contained in the command, “Be ye one, even as I and My Father are one.” It was not until this century had long passed its majority that the organi- zation idea grew tall enough to reach the sacred seclusion of woman's sphere. It may seem strange that the idea was so long reaching the women of the press, but a close inquiry reveals the reasons. The tendency of their work is unsociable, its demands, especially upon newspaper writers, constant, imperative, and exclusory. Many of these women have home cares which Professions. 185 claim and generally receive their best thought and attention, and the amount of brain and hand work they accomplish day after day is simply marvelous. They have no time to hear or see any new thing outside the daily round. If one can afford a week's holiday, she finds her tired brain refusing to receive the added straw of a single thought, and demanding rest by lapsing into utter vacuity. . The wonder is that the idea ever reached them at all. But it did, and took shape—as was most fitting—in the capital and brain- center of the country. Realizing the fact—since then so well stated by Dr. Leech—that “ten ladies working methodically in a society can accomplish as much as fifty without organization,” six correspondents met in that kindly and pleasant nursery for woman's ideas, the Red Parlor of the Riggs House, on July 10, 1882, and organized the association I have the honor to represent this evening. It was the first Woman's Press Association the world had ever known. What an army of pen women there is in the world ! Fancy these writers formed into companies, drilled to keep step, to march shoulder to shoulder and to use their mighty little weapons in the sacred cause of cleanliness and purity and truth ! One could almost see the soiled hosts of ribaldry and scandal and venality fleeing before the white pens of this irresistible army. Yes, it was a grand thought, and its time had fully come. The infant idea embodied in the Woman's National Press Association, though unprotected by any prohibition on similar industries, lived and throve ; passed safely through the measles and whooping-cough stages, and cut its wisdom-teeth with much pain and worry. It has now forty names on its roll, classified into sixteen correspondents, twelve contributors, seven authors, three edi- tors, and four doing editorial writing. It has members from every section of this country and from foreign lands. But if this association had died in its first year, its work would not have ended. “The things which are seen are temporal, but the unseen things are eternal.” The idea it embodies is not only immortal, but active and progressive, and its results shall multiply and strengthen until our literary women shall be of one mind and one spirit through constant communion one with the other. The association formed in New Orleans in 1885, and which is so ably rep- resented by the friend who has preceded me, was the first apparent result. This was followed the same year by the New England and Ohio Associations and the first Illinois Association, but this died and the present one was formed the following year. Another, organized in Indiana, also perished and has not yet been replaced. The Woman’s Press Association of the South is now, I think, in its third year, and numbers about one hundred. Statis- tics furnished me by the secretaries of the New England and Illinois Associ- ations are as follows: the New England Association numbers fifty-eight, of whom twenty-five are editors, two editorial writers, twelve correspondents, 13 186 International Council of Women. nineteen contributors, and two business managers. The Illinois Association held its first meeting for permanent organization January 7, 1886. This is a strong-limbed young giantess, vigorous, energetic and practical. Her report is : members, IoI, of whom thirty-one are editors or doing editorial work; forty-four correspondents; twelve authors and ten publishers. * * * All Southern Press Associations admit both sexes on terms of perfect equality, which retards the organization of women's associations in that favored land. Literature is one avocation which has never closed its doors to women. The “republic of letters” places many restrictions about the ballot, but sex is not one of them. Ours is a noble calling, my sisters of the press, and “nobſesse oblige’’ should be our motto. The title of literary woman is never more to be the synonym for slovenly attire, or loose morals, or neglected homes. Divinely ordained teachers and trainers of humanity, women must write only true and pure. The long pathway of history and tradition is brightened by woman’s genius and melodious with woman's voice in song or story. Miriam and Deborah were poets, and the woman of Tokoa a short story-writer. Women sat with the wise men of Egypt in their great schools of religion and science, and occupied professors' chairs in the most famous academies of Greece and Rome. But it was left to the latter part of this great century to combine and organize the subtle and varied qualities of woman’s mind, and to unite them by the electric current of sympathy in the divine work of purifying the press and lifting it to its true plane of dignity. Miss ANTHONY. Now we will have a short speech from Mrs. Matilda B. Carse, of Chicago. THE WOMAN’s TEMPERANCE PUBLICATION ASSOCIATION. Mrs. CARSE. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union evolved from that most unique of crusades, the women against the saloon. And the Woman’s Temperance Publishing House evolved from the Woman's Chris- tian Temperance Union as a most natural sequence. Some fourteen years ago the officers of the National Society saw the necessity of having an organ as a source of communication between themselves and the local unions. They had no money, but they had unselfish devotion, and they said: “We will start an eight-page monthly paper, edit it ourselves, charge fifty cents per year for it, and after a time, when the subscription list increases sufficiently, we will be able to pay for an editor and publisher.” Accordingly a few devoted women, with Miss Frances E. Willard as leader, started Our Union, which was the organ of the society for seven years. Those who have had any experience in publishing a paper, starting it even on a good moneyed basis, know what uphill work it is and what a length of time it takes before it becomes self-sustaining. Only such persons can fully understand what a burden these heroic women had to bear, besides being continually harassed by debt, and forced at each annual convention to make a plea for money to Professions. 187 - pay up last year's deficit. Miss Willard and others fully realized how per- fectly inadequate such a small monthly sheet was to rightly represent such a growing cause. But in those primitive days of the association, with the Southern and far Western States and Territories still unorganized, the leaders of the movement had little time to come to a clear understanding as to the best method of founding an organ on a sound financial basis that would worthily represent their cause. A woman, not among the leaders of this movement, except in her own city of Chicago, where she took an active part in temperance, pondered deeply over the need of temperance literature and the necessity of having a large weekly paper on a footing which would insure both literary and finan- cial success. She had seen, since the commencement of the reform, hun- dreds of temperance papers start that would flourish for a few months and then die out because they had no financial backing. She was profoundly impressed that it was her duty to raise a large sum of money to start such a paper. Miss Willard's name was at this time beginning to be widely known not only as a reformer but as a writer. She felt if she could secure her as editor it would be the means of making the paper a success. In the summer of 1879 she took a long journey purposely to meet Miss Willard and confer with her on the matter. Miss Willard entered heartily into the plan, but on account of other pressing work she could not undertake the editorship. Miss Willard's refusal of the editorship did not, however, make the projector of the plan give up the undertaking. In the following year she, with six other ladies, incorporated the Woman's Temperance Publication Association, in Chicago, of which she has been the president ever since. The capital stock at first was $5,000 ; shares, $25. The object, as stated in the paper of incor- poration, was the publishing of a weekly temperance paper, and any other publications the association might deem desirable. One of the by-laws pre- cludes men from holding stock in the company. It states that no person can hold stock except women or members of the Woman’s Christian Tem- perance Union. The first three or four years the work was at times full of discouragement— more money going out than coming in ; those who should have been its friends prophesying that it never could be made self-sustaining. The pro- jectors of it stood by it faithfully, however. Men began to see there was money in it, and some wanted to buy large amounts of stock and secure the controlling interest in it. Much as they needed money, these women would as soon have thought of plucking out their eyes as of letting men, moved by Sordid considerations, have a controlling interest in it. The stock was increased from $5,000 to $15,000; then to $25,000. The last increase, which occurred the first of this year, is to $50,000. The corporation saw $16,ooo, over receipts, slip through their fingers before the tide turned. In 1884 the gain was greater than the outlay, and in 1885 they paid stockholders four per cent. 188 International Council of Women. dividend; in 1886, five per cent., and in 1887, six per cent. They could have declared a much larger dividend than this, but they desired to use the money in machinery in order to increase their printing facilities. January 15, 1880, the first publication of the Woman’s Temperance Press Association made its appearance. It was a sixteen-page weekly temperance paper, Zhe Signa/; its editor and publisher, Mrs. Mary B. Willard. It was started in a most modest way, desk room being secured in the rooms of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. The paper from the first became a favorite, as it could not well do otherwise with such a talented woman as editor. In a few weeks the circulation had so increased that a publisher had to be engaged. The Sigma/ did not become the national organ of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union until November, 1882, when it was consolidated with Our Onion, the monthly paper before alluded to that had been the organ of the National Society for seven years. The paper has ever since been known as Zhe Union Sigma/, and has attained a subscription list of 40, ooo. It was not until 1884 that the associ- ation commenced the publication of miscellaneous literature. It now pub- lishes two weekly papers, five monthly papers, two quarterlies, and a large line of books (including a number written by Miss Willard), leaflets, pamph- lets, and music. The association has sent out over 52, ooo, ooo pages of temperance literature during the past year. Their cash receipts have been, during 1887, $93, ooo. Their property is worth over $50,000, consisting of new machinery and type of the most approved pattern, together with a large stock of finished and unfinished publications, and good ledger accounts. They have a staff of six editors, all being women except the editor of their German temperance paper, Der Deutsch-Amerikaner. The policy of the board of directors, which consists of eleven women, is to give the prefer- ence to women in all the different departments of editing and publishing, if they can do equally as well as men, and to pay them as good wages as men get. Out of eighty persons employed, fifty are women. When we can place the $25,000 worth of unsold stock which we now hold, it will put us in a position to do three times the business we are now doing, and pay a very handsome dividend to all women who invest. But, better than all, it will sow millions of temperance leaves over this land, which will be for the healing of the nation. Miss ANTHONY. Allow me to present to you a practical member of the press, who has carried her paper, single-handed and alone, for five years— Mrs. Clara B. Colby, of Beatrice, Nebraska, to whom we are all indebted for the daily Woman's 7%ibune, with its full stenographic report of the proceedings of this Council. º After a few remarks, Mrs. Colby recited the poem of Ella Dare, “Two in One,” when the audience was dismissed. THURSDAY, MAROH 29, 1888. MoRNING SESSION. O R G A N I Z A T I O N . Matilda Joslyn Gage, Vice-President at Large, of the National Woman Suffrage Association, presiding. Invocation by Isabella Beecher Hooker, after which the audience joined in singing the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Mrs. GAGE. The subject this morning is organization, and it is one that has had great influence upon the world in the past. Women have not been associated in organizations until since the war ; that is, to any very great extent. Our National Woman’s Suffrage Association has never been a close organization. We have been held together rather by the bonds of principle than by those of any external law. I well remember the first suffrage con- vention I ever attended, in the city of Syracuse, in 1852, the question of organization was discussed, and many who had entered into this agitation were very much opposed to it. I recall a letter from Angelina Grimké Weld, who had been obliged to leave her home because she had denounced the system of slavery. She deprecated artificial organization, thinking it rather tended to bind the future as well as the present. Lucy Stone and Ernestine L. Rose also spoke against it. When our war broke out it created a very great change throughout the country. There arose the sanitary com- missions and organizations of many kinds. The first Loyal League organ- ized in the United States was by women, and from that time various organizations have grown up throughout the country. You will hear from others this morning who have inaugurated and carried forward the most powerful of them, and I hope in the discussion the most liberal spirit will prevail. While we remember that organizations in a certain way are bene- ficial, it is equally true that some of the greatest wrongs that have been done to mankind, both materially and spiritually, have been under the influence of organization. I have now the pleasure of presenting one who needs no introduction, whose “Battle Hymn of the Republic ’’ you have just sung, the President of the Association for the Advancement of Women, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe. THE POWER OF ORGANIZATION. Mrs. HOWE. I suppose the human body has from very early times been much thought of as a model for the body social and politic. The old fable of the body and the members exemplifies this, as does that adopted symbol- ism which terms the Christian Church “the Body of Christ.” In old En- 190 International Council of Women. glish, and in new, we use the term body in referring to various aggregations of men or of women, or both. We do not call a mob a body, for the reason that it has no permanent organization, but we say a legislative body, a de- liberative body; we even say a body of doctrine. Why do we use this sym- bolical expression ? What does it mean to us? First, perhaps, a recognized and recognizable form. A body is something that appears; it has distinct shape, form, and outline, and one body is distinguished from other bodies. But this is not enough for our meaning. The term body, as we use it, symbolically, means something more than a form ; it means a form with a function, and I think we use the term with a moral as well as a material significance. The body has various members, through which its functions are performed. These are not identical, but relative. They must work in harmony with each other, and with a constant reference to the central prin- ciple of life, which inspires and commissions them, and to which they in turn are bound to minister. Thus far the symbol is appropriate and expressive ; but as a moral and a material life only partially parallel each other, we shall find it important to show when our symbol ceases to express our thought. The human body is an organism. It did not call itself together. It can not keep itself from dissolution. The working bodies of human society are organizations. The elements which compose them are brought together by intelligent effort and will. They can modify their plans and objects endlessly. They are self- creating and self-destroying. Woe to us women if in drawing a plan of organization we forget the laws which govern organisms. The ant and the bee have each their social mech- anism, and prosper by obeying its requisitions. The mother tyranny of na- ture makes them unchangeable, Caring for the safety and prosperity of the type, she allows its representatives to try no experiments, run no risks. What the ant B C did, the ant A D probably does with as little variation as possible. Into the organisms of human society a principle enters which is foreign to animal life. Progress is the foremost characteristic of man. His social organisms must expand, must meet new needs, and take account of new circumstances, and then must contend for a time with life, and die, if need be, leaving always their seed in the world, from which, with the new generations, the new societies are formed. With all that the imperfections of human wisdom leave for us to divine, we have yet great reason to rejoice both at the increasing development of organizing power and the improved aims and spirit of the associations organ- ized. In the states of Greece, especially in Attica, we see the intense form of organization, essentially military and self-asserting, the ethics of a local patriotism, its measure, and inspiration. In the Roman state we see this power in its extensive form. A larger, a cosmopolitan idea pervades the mighty empire. The Roman eagles carry on their wings the breath of toler- Organization. 191 ation. With this, Pilate weakly interposes in behalf of Jesus, but, finding the Jewish fanaticism so strong, washes his hands of the great responsibility. The power of civil and military organization, resting upon reasonable law and useful discipline, conquered the heart of the Old World, and Greece herself was fain to seek its protection. But in all of these instances the old proverb of “Two can play at a game'' fulfilled itself. The peoples conquered by military skill, themselves acquired the art of war. The barbarians, out- witted by civilization, themselves became civilized. The empire crumbles; the republic of nations founds itself. Force and fraud go together. Organ- izations which employ the one must avail themselves of the other. Hence, military and diplomatic strategy are largely founded upon deceit, and its weakness is shown in their results, which are constantly shifting and chang- ing. The great beneficent organizations of to-day have a deeper foundation— a more permanent character. The good they seek is wrought at no man's expense ; for, though all benevolent undertakings cost money, they do not plunder nor defraud any one, since it is best for all parties that society should pay its honest debts. With all that we can derive or do in this line an immense deficit still remains on the side of might against right. First of all, let us ask, what organization can do and what it can not. It can so embody the general interests of humanity as to set them before the world as taking necessary precedence of merely natural objects and predilections. It can build a capital of the nation, in which north and south, east and west, white, black, red, and tawny yellow, may meet, and all may say, “My capital and my country.” In the great names of religion, patriotism, and morality, it can call together vast assemblies and realize the inspired line of Shakespeare: “One touch of nature makes the Whole World kin.” But, as organization works with human materials, it can not escape the doom and danger of things unseen. Physical life maintains itself by the seclusion of forces in the small compass of an animal form. Family life maintains itself in the seclusion of home. The city must take care of itself as a city, the state as a state. In other words, the limited, particular ques- tions of each one's life are so important that they must not be lost sight of in the work of generalizing ideas. Morality would suffer instead of gaining, if we should postpone the care of health, the economy of the household, the administration of our town, village, or district to speculative study or missionary enterprise. The difficulty of organization, or at least one of its difficulties, is in the reconciliation of the far and the near, the regulation of relations between the particular and the general. Now comes in the power of truth over human hearts. If your central principle is genuine it will command the currents of conviction from the northern to the southern extremity. Organization must, therefore, found 192 International Council of Women. itself upon an universal and availing interest. But this principle enunciated may turn out to be only a name. The banner of a great cause may be raised aloft by wretches whose intention is to betray it. Every sublime word that men can utter may be used to cheat and juggle with. The more widespread the enthusiasm the more possible the delusion. How shall we, who must in everything trust to those who shall act for us, how shall we be able to assure ourselves that they do act for what we intend and believe in P. This assur- ance can only be very partially given and very cautiously accepted. The price of freedom is said to be eternal vigilance. The same price must be paid for every condition of the public weal. I will name three condi- tions which must combine to make this vigilance : (1,) we must be loyal to the name in which we associate; (2,) we must make matters in our immediate neighborhood conform to it; (3,) we must assure ourselves of the character and ability of those who assume to represent it. No device that I know of in history so well answers these three purposes as does the combination which our own social system presents: the relig- ious liberty which is indispensable to moral and intellectual sincerity ; the general good level of popular education ; and, last and not least, the fact of universal suffrage. And this brings me the opportunity to salute with honor those who first saw and dared to say that suffrage in America was only half universal, and that no man was fully enfranchised whose wife and mother and daughter did not share his state of freedom. Honor to this great name, to this great principle of Suffrage, this true human instrument in the name of the divine principle. Everybody's opportunity, everybody's right ; honor to it in the name of freedom, justice, and humanity. There are three elements of society which we must consider in any attempt at organization. We might call them component classes. There is the class of leaders, small in number, powerful from its correspondence with certain inherent needs of the body politic. There is the class of the led, powerful in numbers and in the multiplication of sympathy. This is, by far, the larger class of the two already mentioned. The third is a class of medium extent, slow and resolute of movement—a class whose members neither aspire to lead nor submit to be led. This is a deliberative class. Of the two before mentioned, the first is autocratic, while the second is democratic. The class which I have placed between these two is parliamentary. In all organi- zations the position of this class is very important. The autocratics natu- rally tend to tyranny. The demos naturally tend to a slavish following. The parliamentals restrain the one and instruct the other. They are the safeguards of all liberties. Where their action is unimpeded, autocracy may make its review with the least danger of exceeding its bounds. But the demos should look to it that this slow and substantial stratum of character be not eliminated nor suppressed, for the greatest danger to society lies in the arbitrary procedure of the autocrat and the thoughtless or passionate Organization. 193 acquiesence of the demos. Where the parliamentals have fair play this dan- ger, which always exists, is known and averted. My belief in this analysis of society has made me distrustful of its would- be leaders, the people who are nothing if not supreme, and who endeavor with a fabricated reputation to ensnare the suffrage of the unknowing multi- tude. Even if they have real power and talent, I look upon their predom- inance as hurtful to society, and responsible for many of its mischiefs. I am, therefore, always concerned in the freedom and dignity of the parlia- mentary body, whose office is to digest and assimilate the various elements which enter into life and action. Of course, this class is not infallible, nothing is, but the Divine. It may be cajoled, deceived, it may be bought and sold, in which case the body politic will come to grief. But in its honest and intelligent action I find the greatest security for any and all association. I have had the honor, for some years past, to be the president of a modest association which calls itself an “Association for the Advancement of Women.” We hold an annual conference. We have responsible com- mittees; we are not heralded here and elsewhere with high-sounding names. What I claim for our convention is that its action is neither autocratic nor slavish, but that we have worked in our measure to make it truly represent- ative. I recognize the merit of much larger associations, and shall look with interest upon any extensive plans which may grow out of the present interesting assemblage of women. But my advice to all would be, take care always to have a strong deliberative body of responsible officers between your leaders and your led. The immense distances which our country includes are an element of weakness which can only be counterbalanced by careful and responsible work in various localities. What can Florida know about Maine P Dakota about Boston and New York? If the central thought which unites us is a valid and valuable one, the thoughtful women in Florida, in Canada, in Colorado, in Utah, will be able to group themselves around it. The office of our deliberative class will be, first, to see that the central thought is every- where adequately understood ; secondly, to see that the thinkers and their conclusions are fairly represented. I am anxious to say one word here regarding two aspects of association, which we may term the general and the particular. I value the unity of feeling and of sympathy which can gather the suffrages of women throughout the country in favor of any great question of moral advancement, like the temperance reform, for example. The church universal waves its banner over us, and we are glad to acknowledge our allegiance to it, but the general alliance can not take the place of particular alliances made within close limits of township neighborhoods. In any general alliance some valuable elements of power are necessarily lost. Personality is for the moment sac- - 94 International Council of Women. rificed to union. We wish to stand with united front when we champion any large movement, but the divisions and subdivisions of individual policy and preference have much to do with keeping society up to its true standard. There are fine, even infinitesimal questions, which can not be properly dis- pensed with. When the passion for participating in general action over- sweeps the community too strongly, their critical processes of thought, of study, if not paralyzed, are at heart discouraged and hindered from bringing about their proper result. The work of the Woman's Club, on the other hand, seems to me calculated to remedy the defects inherent in widespread association. Each club takes up its little burthen, devises its plans of work, solves its own problems, and fulfills its own tasks. The influence which they have already exerted in various communities is very great, and in the main, I must think, very good. We have been summoned here under the prestige of a very attractive and inclusive name—that of an International Council of Women. Surely, from our coming together much good ought to result. National limitations and prejudices may be effaced, and a broader and more hopeful good-will may hereafter unite our efforts for public and private weal in many a remote lo- cality. But let us go back from this enlargement to work all the more in- dustriously within our own bounds. The limitation of the home is a precious one for us women, seeing that home, which is conceded to be our special province, is at once college and court, church and sanitarium. The public health, the public religion, the public morality, are all dependent upon the intimate springs and sources of private life. Local clubs and associations enlarge the limits of the home, still keeping the precious aroma of individual feeling and character. If the home and the club are faithfully administered, with due regard to the claims and gifts of each and every one, then the great meetings which may be called from time to time will have a genuine office and outcome. A point to bear strongly in mind in the present connection is the heredity of organizations. Christ, perhaps, thought of this when he said to his disciples: “Other men have labored, and ye have entered into their labors.” Unquestionably the Jewish Church, iconoclast as was its great founder, inherited much from what the Bible calls the wisdom of Egypt, and, at a later day, from the religious philosophy of the Persians. The Christian Church inherited from Judaism. Nor is this inheritance confined to relig- ious bodies. Philanthropic and humanitarian organizations also inherit values which are constant and steadfast in the moral world. To name only a single instance, let us acknowledge how much the Woman Suffrage move- ment inherited from the Anti-Slavery organizations. I love to look through the vista of glories which lies behind us to the faithful souls who, from cen- tury to century, have kept and handed down the truth and its methods. Very momentous to us, my dear sisters, should be the thought of the organ- ization which the generation following us will inherit from our own. - Organization. 195 The business world is full of organized robbery. The political world is full of organized injustice. The religious world is organized to uphold in- spiration and intolerance. The military world is the stronghold of whole- sale murder and spoliation. Who will organize a brave and patriotic resist- ance to all these evils? Can we women with white hair go peacefully to our graves leaving the young generations bound hand and foot in the slavery of evil institutions? I hope that from this Council a new influence will go out, that so wide an agreement among the mothers and daughters of men will leave its mark upon the laws and customs which we shall bequeath to posterity. The doctrine of redeeming love is the great glory of Christianity. This is simply the doctrine that evil is overcome of good, and that the great vic- tories of the Divine are the victories of love. Now, my dear ones, this love for humanity which God puts into our cradles as his initial gift, which puts itself at interest in the training of family life, which receives in the church the mission to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, is the love which is to redeem the world from its greed, its injustice, its bar- barism. Let this be the key-note of all that we shall attempt in thinking and acting in common. Out of it alone can come the great moral and social harmonies, whose armies usher in the new heaven and new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Mrs. GAGE. I have great pleasure in introducing Miss Mary F. Eastman, another delegate from the Association for the Advancement of Women. Miss EASTMAN. Dr. Holmes, over the tea-cups, has lately added a beati- tude to those which are canonical, and says: “Blessed are those who say our good things for us.” On that theory I shall have to confess that blessed is my predecessor. I was sure she would say them all, and say them so that we may feel, as some one else has said, our own rejected thoughts come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. I have had long experience in this. I have, therefore, thought it best not to read from manuscript, which would have given me the privilege of keeping within my prescribed limits, but to add what random thoughts have come to me as supplemental to what my friend has so well said. In organization we recognize a relatively high state of development, and know also that development increases through organization. The lowest matter in the scale is that which is unorganized. We speak of it as inert. Organized matter suggests activity. Organization means to an end—for a purpose. It tells of use. It hints of service. Duty inheres in it. Organ- ization means that facts are specialized, and that thereby we increase the points of contact with the outer world. It means, also, that each part fits harmoniously into all the others. This we may apply to the physical, and no less to the social, world; and in the latter nothing indicates better how far we are developed than how far we are fitted to combine with others for noble uses. 196 International Council of Women. Nothing has more discouraged progress than the commonly-held belief that this was true of only half the race ; that the other half—the better share, as they were in the habit of calling it—should cherish self-seeking narrow- ness and exclusiveness. You recollect, perhaps, some years ago, in the Popu- ſar Science Month/y, a very learned article, which went to prove that women were centripetal and men centrifugal. In fancy it was argued almost to a demonstration. I remember that it came to so fine a point as this : That women were actually said to button their dresses centripetally, while men buttoned their clothes centrifugally. I think, my friends, that with all of us this theory must long since have been abandoned. We must recognize that variety is essential to life; that largeness is our aim, not narrowness; that reaching out to others should be the law of our being. Nothing is more a feature of the time, perhaps, than the tendency to form organizations. We have come to regard humanity, not as complete or ex- pressed in individuals, but as a solidarity. We have learned that what serves one serves all; that nothing that is not for the general good can possibly be good for individuals. As an outgrowth of this has come the tendency to clasp hands. Rev. Edward Everett Hale has said well that there is not so Sad a word in the whole English language as “apart ; ” none so blessed as “together.” In obedience to such a consciousness we are reaching out more and more to others, and this is indicated by the multiplication of asso- ciations for common work or purpose. We are coming to comprehend as a living reality that “where two or three are gathered together in My name there am I–the Christ—with them.” Whenever one of us touches heart and hand with another we are mindful of an inflaming of the spirit which we do not get alone. The value of organizations depends, of course, upon their aim and the spirit in which they are carried out. The power is that of the compound lever, which easily becomes a crushing if it be not a consecrated one. Witness the trusts which so grievously threaten the community, so that the Boston Transcript says “it is easier to organize a trust than it is to trust an organization.” + + + In association, feeling, and especially selfish feeling, gets the least possible chance. If it comes to the front, as it is almost sure to do, it shows itself repulsive even to the possessor. “I didn’t think I looked like that,” said a little girl, in a dissatisfied tone, as she looked at her photograph. In our work together, when we are off guard as to appearances, our character por- traits get taken instantaneously; and, unawares, we sometimes get views of ourselves which are not flattering, though they may be serviceable. Kinder- garten is the place where it is systematically cultivated on the true basis. Sometimes I think that about all the legal complications, the personal antag- onisms, and the confusions of the world come from this lack of a clear sense of the line beyond which I may not, without intrusion, approach you, and you may not approach me. If we could once settle this, what a world of Organization. 197 - interference, of impertinence, and of meddlesomeness which sum up so many of the banes of life would disappear. Let me, or, if need be, teach me to remember that thus far and no farther may I come to you even with help or suggestion, and that these are to be accepted or rejected at your discretion or option. If I press farther, just there your absolute right, I had almost said your obligation, to resist, both for your sake and mine, begins. In organization most of us discover something which we have heretofore lacked, in which, my friends, I think we find a supplement of our imperfect selves. None of us, I suppose, has ever undertaken movements of importance without misgivings from a sense of lack of power. Measuring ourselves against the task it is sure to prove the larger. How inspiriting, then, it is to clasp hands with others set to the same purposes and possessing, perhaps, the very gifts we lack. We feel that together we have become an electric bat- tery, and that the charge of one is the charge of all. How many times in my own experience have the discouragements all vanished when I came into my organization and found my incompleteness rounded out by the powers of others. I think we must consider that we are not so much individual people, living for and in ourselves, but that all of us make the one, and that individuals are but specialized members of this great body. The other day I saw a marvelous picture in stone—a mosaic as exquisitely shaded as if by the artist’s brush—here a bit of solid color melted into the blue of the sky, there another gave life to the tree and helped to suggest the human figure, and all combined harmoniously. So we are all helping to build humanity, bit by bit, and it matters very little which part of the picture falls to us, but it greatly concerns us not to mar the whole. In such a view, we are sure not to miss the lessons both of self-respect and the respect due to humanity. In the attrition of opinion, which comes necessarily in organized work, it may be thought that antagonisms are likely to be developed. So far as I have observed associations of women, the result has been quite otherwise. The necessity of viewing matters from a common standpoint, tends to gen- erous effort to observe from the point of view of others, and to give fair con- sideration to argument—a habit which can not fail to broaden the mind and quicken the sympathies. I could open to your observation such counselings of committees as it has been my privilege to sit with for the past few days, and many a time before, where earnestness of advocacy combined with courtesy, where fairness characterized the judgment, and where each seemed, at least, to be “in honor preferring one another.” Men gain by their study of public interests, an invaluable training in ques- tions of right as between man and man, as well as of abstract justice, from which women are, most unfortunately, generally debarred. Nothing is bet- ter for us than to be driven back to principles. And this brings me to a point which I think of paramount importance for all to learn—that is, a quick sense of respect for the limitations of personal rights. While this 198 International Council of Women. should be held a most valuable part of all training, I think only the kinder- garten gives it in a systematic way. * * * Mrs. GAGE. I have the pleasure of presenting Mrs. Abby Morton Diaz, of Boston, who represents the Woman’s Educational and Industrial Union of that city. Mrs. DIAZ. Taking mankind generally, one-half as the complement of the other half, it is not well in carrying on the world’s work that the man element should alone be prominent and predominant ; you want both. It is not well that man should be alone. I was at a meeting of the Women's Press Association in Boston a little while ago, and men were there as guests. Every editor present testified to this—that journalism was much improved since women had come to take part in it; and that is one broad principle that will run through everything—through all our charities, through all our institutions. On our boards of insane asylums, charitable institutions, and lying-in hospitals, it is not well that man should be alone ; we must have the woman element in them. Yet, if you will look at the reports of children's hospitals, asylums of all kinds, and a great many institutions where women and children are brought, you will find no woman's name among the direct- ors. All are controlled by men. The world, as you might say, has been allowed to go on with a part of itself, and you might compare it to a gig trying to run on one wheel, dragging the other after it. What you want is to take up that other wheel, put it in its place and let it help carry, instead of being drawn along. The first step is to elevate woman. This is the aim of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union, 74 Boylston street, Boston. The institution is free to all women and open from nine in the morning until nine at night. We have our placards in the railroad stations, and often women come to us who have just landed on our shores. Any woman who goes to our union will find a safe place to ask questions, whether she wants advice or local information, whether she wants companionship or protection. My object in coming here is to speak not so much of the work of that institution as to wake an interest in it, and help establish a system to have one in every city and town. Our society has a committee of ladies who, each in turn, sits at the desk, to act as lady of the house and answer all questions, and is sort of general directory, giving local information in relation to all institutions of whatever nature, public or private. Then we have a library and reading-room, to which all women are welcome. The Entertainment Committee has weekly recep- tions, to which all who choose may come. The Employment Committee gets situations as far as practicable for those out of employment. Besides the regular persons having charge of carrying on all the business, there is a supplemental committee of ladies who come one at a time to talk with the women who apply for work and give them their sympathy and friendship. The Industrial Department disposes of what is made by women. There are now over 7oo consignors. Last year there was over $26,ooo worth sold, the larger part being food. Organization. - 199 The Employment Committee gets situations, not only for domestic serv- ants, but for what are called the higher employments. Connected with the industrial department is a lunch-room, where food can be bought at moderate prices, and where any woman or girl may bring her own lunch. The protective department gets the wages of women who are defrauded of them. We have lawyers who work without charge, and every woman, no matter how little is kept from her, is protected. We are now known so well as to have become a terror in the city. Men and women who owe their employees sometimes pay the debt under the threat of being brought to the Women's Union. Then we try to benefit women in every possible way. Ultimately, we hope to reach them in jails, in prisons, in police stations, wherever they need the friendship, protection and sympathy of woman ; that is what we mean to do. There are two underlying principles to our work. One is, we meet on a human basis. We are not organized to reach any particular class. We meet for mutual help. Usually, when people wish to do good, they think they must go down and seek the repulsively bad ; but badness is badness wherever found, and we recognize that all have needs, and that those needs may exist among the fashionable and well-to-do, as well as among those of the lower ranks. We think the rich are just as well worth saving as the poor, and we deplore the waste of energy, that exists among well-to-do women. We think it just as much the purpose of philanthropy to take a rich woman who is devoted to frivolities, and arouse in her a purpose to help her kind and bring out all that is good in her, as to take a poor woman and give her a way of earning her own living or teaching her to read. There is a stigma put on a certain kind of sin, and a woman is sometimes called a fallen woman. Oh, my friends, she is a fallen woman who falls into conceit: she is a fallen woman who falls from integrity; she is a fallen woman who falls into selfishness—that is degradation, wherever existing— and those must be helped to rise, and we must call them together and help them to feel their needs. If you will look at the statements of the biogra- phers you will always find in the dedication, if it is a great man, that he owed all he was to his mother. The orators, the press, the pulpits, and the platforms are always saying the woman of to-day is the queen of to-mor- row. The hand that rocks the cradle guides the world. Let us add that, therefore, which the oracles never think to add—give this queen a royal preparation for her royal duties. That is just what we want to do. In saying this I by no means ignore the responsibilities of the fathers, but the mothers do have the more abiding opportunities; they have the early chances for forming the character. Character is king, it is the royal thing; you must make way for it. Take this little chain, individuals make the country, character makes the individual, mothers have the large part of the work of making character; therefore elevate the mothers; bring them together and make them think. Thought 200 International Council of Women. is the power that rules the world. Therefore, every gathering of thoughtful women leads on the work, and this is one of the offices of our society; we have what we call coteries where we come together to discuss the problems of the day. I want one of these societies in every city as a center of enlight- enment, sending out its influence over the nation and finally over the world. Miss ANTHONY. To some of the young people who are here I would like to say that Mrs. Diaz is the woman who wrote the “Schoolmaster's Trunk.” Mrs. GAGE. I now invite Mrs. Marilla M. Hills, of Dover, N. H., who is in her eighty-second year, to say a few words. Mrs. Hills was the originator and founder of the missionary work of the Free Baptist Church. Mrs. HILLs. I count it one of the greatest privileges my Heavenly Father has ever given me to meet this grand Council of earnest, consecrated, cul- tured women. I come as the humble representative of the Free Baptist Woman’s Missionary Society. As a people we are one of the smaller tribes of God's Israel, but from the commencement of our denominational life our sisterhood have ever been found in advanced lines of work for the elevation of woman, and we have always had a few women as preachers among us. As far as I have been able to ascertain, the Free Baptists were the first to establish a Woman’s Missionary Society. This was done in 1840. Previous to our organization there had been a few local ones in one or two societies, but no general work that extended throughout the denomination. - In 1873 we reorganized and made some change in our name and in our method of work. Among our missionaries sent to India are five sisters, the daughters of our pioneer missionary, Rev. J. Phillips. All these girls were students at the college at Hinsdale, Mich. We did not know that we were so rich in gifted and brilliant minds. To one of these, Mrs. Brewster, my co-delegate, I feel that we owe very much. For nearly nine years she pub- lished and edited, with rare ability, the Missionary //e/fter, and now is a city missionary in Brooklyn. - - The valuable papers from Denmark and Italy are given here : DANISH woMAN’s UNION FOR THE PROTECTION OF YOUNG GIRLS AND LONELy WOMEN. Mrs. ADA. M. FREDERIKSEN. A friend of Miss Barner, the founder and President of the association, said to her, in speaking of “L’Union des Amis des Jeunes Filles,” “We ought to have such an association here,” and when she saw how deeply interested Miss Barner was, she added: “I’ll make you a present of the idea.” Miss Barner took this word as a gift from God, and went to work immediately with great energy. A board was formed in 1880, consisting of Mrs. Julia Halkjer, General Consul and Mrs. Hansen, Rev. C. Sorensen, and the Secretary of the Council of State, L. R. Kofoed. The idea was to form an association of women to support the young servant Organization. 201 girls, who, on arriving in a large town, are often led into temptation by un- scrupulous women and men. Lodgings are offered to them, situations prom- ised, with high salaries and very little work. The girl, while waiting for these, runs short of money, her clothes are pawned, and she is almost helpless. There exist in Copenhagen several other institutions, the Servant Girls’ Home, the Orphans' Home, etc.; but, although these institutions try to fol- low, as far as possible, the fate of the girl sent out from their schools, it is only a small part of the servant girls who are connected with them. These ladies meet the girls at the steamboat-landing, or the depot, and see that they have a respectable home to go to. They would have liked to rent or build a home ; but, not being organized, they did the best they could. In Search- ing for respectable lodgings for the girls they happened to find a home where the house-mother, an old servant girl, who herself had had a narrow escape, was delighted to help. When the ladies saw how sympathetic she was to the girls, what an interest she took in the work, they persuaded her husband and herself to move into a large house, and, the right person found, the home was opened. She undertook the housekeeping and the immediate direc- tion. As their means were small it had to be on a small scale. They were at first only able to help ten, or, in an emergency, sixteen, girls. The ma- tron and two young girls, who were trained in housekeeping, did the cook- ing, and each visitor made her own bed and helped a little in the general work. Any respectable woman, who needs it, can get room and board there for a little more than twelve cents a day, and a night's lodging and breakfast for five cents. º The girls who are educated there have to pay $2.25 a month. None but young girls, with good recommendations from their school or their clergy- man, are accepted as pupils. Besides this, the Home is open on Sundays and holidays for former inmates and for girls introduced by them, or by a mem- ber of the branch office of their town. At their evening meetings hymns are sung, the Gospel of the day read, sometimes followed by a Bible expla- nation. They have tea and rolls and a social talk, in which the ladies learn a good deal of their young friends. - Let me give you a few instances of how it works. Two girls, one six- teen years old, the other a little older, came to Copenhagen. One of them had the address of the Home given to her on leaving her parish, but, being too bashful to use it, she followed the other girl to a house recom- mended by a kind gentleman on the pier. She did not like the looks of the house and fled to the bureau, and the other girl was sent for immediately. Another girl went straight to the Home, on finding that the people, to whom she had engaged herself, had opened a saloon. In a third case a girl came late to the Home. Her story sounded very odd. She had left her Serv- ice that evening on finding that her master had rented her room, and she was expected to sleep in the family bedroom. Incredible as it seems, it was 14 202 International Council of Women. so. In another place a very young girl was beaten, sworn at, not given suf- ficient food. Neighbors gave her the address of the Home. Why did she not get another place? She was not permitted to leave, having engaged herself for six months, not knowing of the protection given to her by law. Fearing the fine she might incur, she did not dare to do it. In years past, as a rule, servants were hired for a year—later for six months—and could not leave at the expiration of that time without having given warning when half of the term had passed. I remember I felt very cheap the first time I—fifteen years ago—hired a girl for a month. My only comfort was that I might keep her ever so long, in spite of this wickedness, if I liked her. Every servant has a book, in which the time she is hired for and her wages are stated. This book is kept by the mistress, who, on the girl leaving, has to state how long the girl has stayed with her. In towns this book has to be taken to the police office and stamped before the girl can get a new place; in the country, to the parish officers or to the pastor. Music teachers—young girls who come to town to fit themselves for better places by learning fine laundry work, ironing, and so forth—women who come to town to consult doctors, or who have to send a little one to a hospital, come and are received. Are bad women received P. Not knowingly ; but they are kindly told where to go, and taken there. Sick people, too sick to be received, are sent to the hospital. The Home has now seventy branch offices—a net-work over all the country. The ladies of these offices try first to have the girls work among their own people. If the girl has made up her mind to go, they give her the address of the Home, or of the office in the town or district she wants to go to. The annual membership fee is small. I hesitate to give it to you in American money. It is only a little more than twenty-five cents. Many give more, and gifts are gratefully received. Bakers, butchers, and brewers send gifts in natura ; newspapers and maga- zines are coming in, too. The branch offices remit half of their income to the headquarters and are in continual correspondence with it. Inquiries come in about the antecedents of a girl; a father wants to learn the whereabouts of his daughter ; a girl wants to find a place, and so forth. For the rest, they work independently, each branch doing the work its hand findeth to do in its neighborhood, the headquarters setting an excellent example. Meetings for servant girls and factory girls are held regularly. The girls bring their knitting, Sewing, mending, darning stockings. Some do it very nicely ; others have to be helped. Sewing-machines are on hand. The ladies alternately read to them good stories, poems; a hymn is sung. Tea is served with plenty of rolls. As a rule, the girls are clean and neat and behave well. The last meeting of the season is made more of a treat. These meet- ings, in some of which instruction in the three R's is given to those who wish it, are held in school-rooms and other public places, where light and heat only have to be paid for. One excellent way of helping overworked Organization. 203 teachers, sewing-girls, servants, and convalescents is to send them into the country; and the Home has had the pleasure of sending about two hundred out this last year. Railroads and steamers have given part of the tickets free, and Her Royal Highness the Crown Princess liberally gave the rest and paid fares to the places not reached by the railroads. The Central Home in Copenhagen has a Christmas festival that gathers all manner of lonely women, young and old, around its tree, and entertains about eighty guests. A good meal, some useful gifts, and often the meal for the next day are given to them on this occasion by Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Louise. The address of the Home is printed on a slip of paper, and the ladies in the provinces try to have it pasted in “the book” of every young girl who leaves their district ; and here I come to the practical object of my report. I know there are many homes for self-supporting women all over the United States, and I do not doubt that there are many ladies connected with such homes in this assembly.* The association is con- nected with two similar associations formed in Christiania and in Bergen, in Norway; and, furthermore, with the Union des Amis des Jeunes Filles, the Young Women's Christian Association, the Travelers' Aid Society, and others. A special committee is formed, the ladies of which meet the young girls at the depot; take them to hotels or to the Home ; see them off if they are only passing through. I shall be glad to furnish the address of said com- mittee to any one who would like to have it. Miss Kirstine Frederiksen, President of the Danish Woman’s Association, sent the following paper: THE DANISH woman’s ASSOCIATION. This organization was founded in 1871. Among its founders were Mr. Frederik Bajer, member of the lower house of the Rigsdag, and his wife, Mrs. Mathilde Bajer, Mrs. Rowsing, Mrs. Casse, Mrs. Christiani, Miss Caro- line Testmann, and Mr. Klein, architect ; of these Mrs. Rowsing, whose seventieth birthday was celebrated a few years ago in quite a significant manner, is still a member of the board of directors, while Miss Testmann is at the head of the Business College for Women, which the association has established. Another school, the only one of its kind, a Female Institute of Industry and Art, in which instruction is given in drawing, painting, engraving, etc.; and still another, a Sunday-School for Laborers, also date their existence to the first period of the life of the association. But otherwise everything went on quietly, in an unassuming, retired manner, on the just conviction that the first thing needed was education. Its practical energy the association *Will any one of you who knows of such homes kindly give me their addresses, or send them to my address, 357 East Ohio street, Chicago, that we could have them printed and distributed among the girls on the steamers that leave Scandinavia. ? Most of them go to friends or places, but to many of them it would be a great help to know of a reliable home. They are met here by the same dangers as in Europe, increased tenfold by their ignorance of the language. Qne of my girls told me that the hardest moment in her life was when she, on arriving at the Chi- cago depot, was told, “Do not trust anybody, especially not your own countrymen.” * 204 International Council of Women. principally spent in remedying some of the worst evils in the way of its progress. It supported, with money, some of our first students and other young women who strove to work out a way for themselves. But, in 1883, a newly-elected board of directors declared, upon entering office, that the time had come to work in larger circles and with greater emphasis for the ideas which made up the platform of the association and bound its members together. An active agitation was set on foot by means of lectures deliver ed in various places of the country, pamphlets on the “Position of Woman in Social Life,” the “Legal Position of the Natural Child and its Mother,” “Woman’s Right to Self-support, “Health and the Female Dress,” etc., and since January 1, 1885, an independent periodical, A vinden og Samſundeſ—“Woman and Society.” This agitation found a peculiarly well-prepared field to operate in among that party, half religious, half political, but wholly national, which in the third decade of this century was formed by the poet-preacher, N. F. S. Grundtvig, one of the master-spirits of the century, and which occupies a prominent position in the Danish civilization of to-day. The movement which he started was powerfully borne onward by the endeavors which in the fifth decade became the one never-interrupted exertion of the Danish peo- ple—to defend their boundary, to protect their language, to vindicate their spiritual character. It immediately stirred the educated class, and soon it penetrated even to the lowest layers of the people, awakening a new appre- ciation of history and poesy and arousing a new craving for further develop- ment not only of the intelligence, but of the whole moral and spiritual life. It became the basis of a more ideal view of life which combines the common sense and the courage of modern civilization. Ably represented among this party by Mrs. Astrid Stampe Feddersen, Miss Ida Falbe Hansen, and Mr. Svend Hogsbro, the Danish Woman’s Asso- ciation found many warm friends and supporters all over the country. At the peasant’s hearth Kvinden og Samfundef is read and pondered. In the villages, when on Saturday or Sunday, people come together after the work of the week, the cause is eagerly discussed. From the most distant cor- ners of the country, the fifty cents which it costs to become a member, are sent to the association “which fights for woman’s rights.” Nevertheless, though during the last five years while the agitation has lasted, the member- ship of the association has doubled eight times, it still counts only one mem- ber for each six hundred full-grown women in the country. Nor is there anything so very great to be said about the influence which the movement has had on our legislation. In 188o a bill, brought before the lower house by Mr. Bajer and supported by a petition which was circulated by the Danish Woman’s Association and signed by 2,350 ladies, became law, and married women thereby acquired the right to dispose of what money they might earn after marriage, but the right to dispose of means they might be possessed of before marriage is still denied them. Organization. 205 Hitherto the Danish Woman's Association has considered it inexpedient to incorporate the political vote with its platform, but it has worked steadily and with all its might to procure the municipal vote for women, and the present government does not seem to be antagonistic to the cause. Twice, a bill for that purpose has been brought before the lower house and success- fully carried, but in the upper house, composed of the largest landed propri- etors and the heaviest tax-payers, it found only coaxing compliments and fine phrases, but no real support. Several other reforms, for instance in the social position of natural children, our association has striven to push partly by discussion, partly by petitions, to the Rigsdag. What is wanted is to procure to the natural child admission to inheritance, right to an education proportionate to the means of the parents, and right to the name of the father. A bill of some such contents will be laid before the Rigsdag this session and is expected to become law. Among the discussions raised by our association one especially attracted wide and deep attention. In the spring of 1887 Miss Elizabeth Grundtvig, a grand-daughter of the above-mentioned N. F. S. Grundtvig, delivered a lecture before a lady audience on an “Equal Standard of Chastity for Men and Women.” By analysis of various examples drawn from the fiction of the day she proved it sound and just that the moral law should be one and the same for men and women, and she strongly insisted that such an equality should be effected by men adopting the standard now recognized only by women. The lecture was published, and immediately both the lec- turer and the association were made the subject of very vehement attacks in the press. They were not left without defense, however. First the Danish poet, C. Hostrup, came to their aid; then a plea was made in their behalf from your side of the ocean, by the Norwegian preacher Kvistofer Janson ; and finally the Norwegian poet, Björnstjaerne Bjornson, took up their cause. He wrote several articles for the newspapers, and, on the invitation of the association, he came to Copenhagen and delivered a lecture November 17, 1887. He demonstrated that the full equality of standard could not but add to the health and happiness of the race, provided it was brought about by strengthening the demands on man and not by weakening those on woman. Of course, as this lecture openly treated of many things which peo- ple in general are used only to whisper about, it could not help giving offense to many. Nevertheless, the enthusiasm of the past and his overpowering eloquence finally carried away the audience, and the lecture was repeated with unexampled success in twenty-three other Danish cities; afterwards also in Norway, Sweden, and Finland. At many points the association has been equally successful in its practical undertakings. In 1886 was established a peculiar kind of “Intelligence Office,” in which, without paying any fee, women could obtain all needed information concerning their legal, social, and economic relations; in 1887 206 International Council of Women. an employment bureau for servant girls; in 1888 a similar bureau for govern- esses, clerks, etc., and recently have been appointed a committee to push the introduction into the primary schools for girls of training in cooking, washing, ironing, and other domestic work, and another to find out means of opening the trades to women. Mrs. Ada M. Frederiksen sent the following paper: WoMAN's EDUCATION IN DENMARK. At a meeting of the leaders of the Liberal party of Denmark in 1847, where the question of universal suffrage was discussed, it was said: “But the men are not competent to use this right to vote; how can they be?” “Edu- cate them,” was one answer. “The right will educate them,” another. “Educate the mothers,” a third. This answer was passed by as a good joke; the men were too busy fighting their own battles then. Still, it was not said in vain, for a bill providing a state examination for women who desired to be teachers in public schools, carried by Bishop Monrad, 1860, was the result of it. A special examination for women who desired to become prin- cipals of private schools was in existence, but only a few took advantage of it. This new examination gave to women a permanent position in the pub- lic state schools, and entitled them to a pension after certain years of service. Mrs. Astrid Stampe Feddersen tells us, in her little book on “Woman's Rights,” that, while the government yearly spends on the education of men 2, Ioo, ooo crowns, it only spends 30, ooo crowns on the education of women.” This means, for every crown put into the education of girls seventy are given to that of the boys. Theoretically the difference is not quite so startling, for we are in a state of transition ; the expenses of the university are not taken into account, and women have (1875) been admitted to the University of Copenhagen and taken degrees in every department except that of the- 7 y ‘ology. As more women take advantage of this, the difference in the outlay will not be so great. In the high Schools there are already more women than men. In the parish schools the instruction is the same for both sexes. The sons and daughters of peasants' and workingmen are instructed in Bible his- tory, catechism, reading, writing, and arithmetic, and in towns the common schools for boys and girls teach, besides these branches, physics, mathe- matics, and German. Education is compulsory. A small progressive fine has to be paid by children who are absent except in cases of sickness, when they have to bring a doctor's certificate. As the fine is small, parents, and sometimes employers, prefer to pay the fine for the children that work for them. In Copenhagen a janitor is sent for children who do not come, and if a child plays the truant against the will of the parents, it is placed in the internate, a kind of prison in the school. There is a separate school *A Danish crown is about twenty-eight cents. Organization. 207 for the worst kind of children. These have to stay there nights too. The law provides for the case of parents not being able to pay the fine; they can be sent to prison instead, but the law is rarely, if ever, enforced, and then only in cases of flagrant contumacy. There is an inspector for the common schools in Copenhagen, and for those in towns. In the country this work is done by the school committees, of which the pastor is the president. The teachers are superintended by the bishops on their visitation. To understand this we must remember that the Lutheran Church is the state church of Denmark. The middle and higher classes in the country employ private teachers, and then the pastor has to be present at the annual examination. In the lowest and in the highest grades of instruction the rights are equal for boys and girls, but when we come to the Latin School—that is, the preparatory school for the university—we find that these are only for boys. If a girl wants to go there she has to have special instruction, or apply to the more expensive private school. Among these schools for girls that of Miss Zahle, founded in 1851, stands. first, and has, since 1883, the right to graduate to the university. This School is a natural development of her girls' school and high school for girls. As it is now, with its different departments, led by almost independ- ent principals, under the supervision of Miss Nathalie Zahle, it forms a cen- ter of education for Danish women. In this complex of buildings are found a national school, a school of modern languages, a normal institute, a cook- ing school, courses of evening lectures, a preparatory school for the univer- sity, and a gymnasium. When Miss Zahle some day retires from the work, I hope the time will have come for the government to buy the institution and transform it into a public Latin school for girls. There are many other private schools for girls, some of them, as that of the sisters Paludau-Muller, built on purpose for the work. Several private schools for girls of the better class, where housework, laundry work, and sewing are taught, besides literature, music, languages, are found outside the capital, as at Vaeldegaard, Autvortskov, and other places. But some of the best work for the education of the young peasants and peasant-girls is done in the high schools in the country. The grand thought of Bishop Grundtvig, to train the peasants who have no literary opportunities, through oral lectures, was first carried out by Mr. Cold with great success, and later by Messrs. Grove, Schroeder, La Cour, Boyesen, and others. Opportunities for the development of women are increasing. The Danish Women's Association has a large share in it, but we are a conservative people, and it is so hard for parents to believe that they owe an education to their girls as well as to their boys; but they will soon have to realize it. - 208 International Council of Women. The paper on the “Condition of Women in Italy’’ is from Madam Fanny Zampini Salazaro : WOMAN'S CONDITION IN ITALY. Not to know at large of things remote From use, obscure and subtle, but know That which before us lies in daily life, Is the prime wisdom ; what is more is fume, Or emptiness, or fond impertinence, And renders us in things that most concern. Unpracticed, unprepar'd and still to seek.-Milton. To understand woman's position in Italy properly, American women and all who are interested in this question must take into account the substantial difference of social life in Europe and America. Notwithstanding the splendor of her history, Europe is still ruled by many ancient prejudices regarding woman, and must struggle to advance her civilization and triumph over and destroy their consequences. Much has been done toward this end in England, Germany, and other European states. Italy is still young, as she only gained liberty and independence in 1860, whereas in America the desire for liberty was the motive which influenced the democracy in break- ing loose from the mother country. In America the prejudices and traditions of old-established systems are absent, and to act rightly and justly you only need the means to do so. We, in Italy, have still to fight against the established pre-eminence of men and the bigotry of narrow-minded clericals who dread losing their power over women; for women, when rationally educated, will begin to think for them- selves instead of meekly submitting to their authority. The education given in convents has done more harm to Italian women, and consequently to the country, than even the long years of tyranny which oppressed this beautiful land of genius and poetry. Nuns who had no experience of the realities of life, who lived under the mystical influence of a fundamentally great, true, and poetic religion, but who, through ignorance and desire for power, anni- hilated much of its original grandeur and purity, who led such a secluded, unnatural existence, could never give girls a sound, rational education such as would fit them for their position in life. Hence, arose a miserable state of things which, injurious to women, did not improve society and the nation in general. But I must briefly state such facts as will give a clear idea of the actual condition of the Italian woman both in the family and in society; for, as yet, the Constitution allows her no public life. Primary instruction, which was made compulsory in 1877, embraces the first rudiments of education with needle-work, and is given in 16,816 public girls' schools and in 6,082 mixed schools, to 856,321 girls, while boys' schools now number 19,492 and are attended by I, of 7,402 pupils. The normal course for training female teachers for the primary schools comprises the study of pedagogy, Italian language and literature, arithmetic, metric system, elements of geography, history and geography of Italy, physical Organization. 209 geography, elements of natural sciences, of domestic economy, agriculture, the rights and duties of citizens, calligraphy, rudiments of drawing, gym- nastics, singing, needle-work, and French. There are 83 such schools in Italy, attended by 3,316 pupils. In the few “magistral” schools where normal female teachers are trained, the course is the same as the above, only more advanced. There are two superior girls' schools, one in Rome and one in Florence, which were estab- lished with the object of giving a still higher education by adding to the curriculum of the “magistral ’’ schools, English and German, logic and psychology. One hundred and sixty-eight pupils have availed themselves of these advantages. That in Florence is said to be better managed than the one in Rome, which falls far short of the ideal of its foundress, Erminia Fua Fusinato, whose early death deprived it of her fostering care and organiza- tion. In connection with this superior school there is a society for promoting the scientific, literary, and moral culture of women, of which our gracious Queen is honorary president, the Superindent of the school is acting president, and the vice-president is Countess Hugo Balzani, one of the most highly cultivated English women here. Co-operating with them is a committee of ladies who appoint fit and proper persons to lecture to the pupils and mem- bers of the society on various subjects, which are seldom either well chosen or interesting. No lady has yet spoken there, and when Countess Balzani suggested Such an innovation, several members of the committee openly expressed their astonishment at what they evidently considered an almost scandalous depart- ure. However, in deference to her opinion, lectures were permitted to be delivered privately, by women, in the rooms of the Superior Schools, so as not to interfere with the official biweekly professorial lectures. There are several colleges of music, with some 300 pupils who receive a general as well as a musical education ; also sixteen technical schools, where girls receive practical training in needle-work of all kinds, from mending to dressmaking and lace-work; in artificial flower-making, and other kindred industries. These technical schools are under the control of the Minister of Agriculture, Industry, and Commerce, and now train about 4,046 girls. Their influence might be much, extended if, besides technical studies, something were done to raise the thoughts and foster the higher moral qualities of the girls, who never get a chance of hearing a lecture or of reading any good book likely to awaken their better feelings. Private day and boarding Schools abound—4,090 of the former and 848 of the latter, with IoS,662 and 52,925 scholars, respectively. Their direc- tion, often lamentably deficient, is chiefly in the hands of nuns; those under the “ Filles de Charite ’’ being the best. Since 1878 women have been allowed to follow the courses at boy's gymnasia, “ lycees '' and technical schools, as also at all the universities; but this concession, besides giving rise to many unkind observations about the girls who profited by it, raised a 210 International Council of Women. question as to the practical advantages to be derived therefrom, when it was still uncertain whether the learned professions, for which they had now quali- fied themselves, would be thrown open to them. Women were allowed to graduate in medicine, and we now have two lady practitioners. One is in Rome and has been appointed court physician by our Queen ; but, though highly respected, I can not say that her professional career has proved as successful as could be wished. Tacit opposition and lack of confidence have been her chief difficulties, though her lot has been more fortunate than that of a Turinese lady who, though qualified as a law- yer, had to renounce her chosen profession owing to the law courts being closed to her. Our men are not yet sufficiently free from prejudices to openly uphold the principle of even-handed justice to both sexes, and our women are also to blame for not using their home influence to urge men to greater liberality of opinion. If a woman is poor and has to support herself, she has little choice of occupation. As a teacher, she is scantily paid and hard worked, her salary being scarcely sufficient to provide her with food. She is often exposed to worse miseries. If young and nice looking, her superiors, regardless of her forlorn position, make use of it to indulge their vilest passions, and, meeting with resistance, may dismiss her on false pretenses. Several girls have, under these circumstances, chosen death rather than dishonor—one, Itala —, aroused universal sympathy for her, and indignation at the conduct of her infamous seducer, who was severely punished. Such instances are only signs of the corrupt state of things; for few, very few, are morally strong enough to resist the temptation of securing advancement by such foul paths, and to struggle on in poverty and loneliness. Yet this is almost the only opening for girls of the middle class. According to the latest returns, there are 4,488 government teachers and 811 private ones, besides 629 female teachers in the night Schools for adults, 5,957 in the adult schools open on Sundays. Normal and “magistral” teachers number 4,499. Government nominates 2 lady Superintendents of the state boarding-schools and 8 inspectresses. The latter have to report on the condition of public and private schools throughout the kingdom. The way in which these duties are often performed is neither creditable to the government department of public instruction nor to its nominees. One of them, however, Felicita Morandi, Inspectress at Milan, is a shining example of a noble, highly-cultivated woman. Her influence is dreaded by the clerical party, who do all they can to hinder her reforms and prevent the circulation of her little book, “In Famiglia,” eminently adapted for girls' reading. Literary employment is scantily paid and precarious, unless such success can be insured as has rewarded the Marchesa Colombi, Ida Baccini, Matilde Serao (editress of a political paper), Grazia Pierantoni, Mancini, and Neera ; even they could not have supported themselves entirely by their pen. Organization. 211. As it is impossible to obtain any artistic training, women are excluded from all artistic and high decorative work. To supply this want I submitted a Scheme for a girls' School of drawing and industrial art to our “Commissione Centrale per l’Insegnamento Artistico.” It met with high approval and praise, but neither the means nor the will to carry it out were forthcoming, and it remains a scheme. In Turin, Milan, and Genoa, some few female art- workers are employed in painting on china, silk, and vellum. In Venice, the School and factory for lace, reproducing the ancient designs, has given a certain impetus to this branch of female labor, due to Countess Adriana Zon Marcello, lady in waiting to the Queen, who has been assisted by the local member of Parliament, Paulo Fambri. Among the lower classes, women share the labors of the sterner sex, except in one or two handicrafts, where their lack of muscular strength incapaci- tates them. As weavers, spinners, field laborers (I had almost said beasts of burden) we find them toiling for a mere pittance; often for twelve hours of work their highest pay is two francs 25 centimes (45 cents), and a so-called short day of ten hours will sometimes only yield 60 centimes (12 cents). That there exists an earnest desire among Italian women to earn their own livelihood is proved by there being 1,830,482 women workers, 161,202 of whom are, alas! under fifteen years of age. Between schoolmistresses and laborers there is an intermediate class comprising about 11,035 midwives, 23 blood-letters, 9 dentists, 487 female post-officers, and a few telephone clerks; quite lately a few female booking-clerks and chemists' assistants have been appointed in rural districts. Ladies in reduced circumstances think it no shame to beg from friends and acquaintances. To work would be neither genteel nor honorable I Dress- makers, milliners, and domestic servants earn much more than teachers and have an easier life; but the latter are considered of higher social rank. So the daughter of the humble worker, who might profitably follow in her mother's footsteps, prefers to indulge her ambitious pride by entering the “starvation army’’ of female teachers, where she can gain a possible maxi- mum of about 1,000 francs, or more likely a minimum of 5oo francs a year— two francs (forty cents) per day for food, clothing, and all the necessaries of life . It follows as a natural consequence that marriage is held to be the best solution of the problem, and girls use all the fascinations of youth, beauty, dress, and coquetry to catch a husband rather than be compelled to face single life. Such unions seldom realize the high ideal of marriage, with its home influences training the inmates of the household to be true men and women, fit to wage the battle of life with honor and single-mindedness in that state to which God may call them. Having thus sketched the social standing of Italian women, I must dwell for a few minutes on their position in the eye of the law when married. Under the civil code woman has no existence apart from her husband. He 212 International Council of Women. is her lord and master in all things, and, as she is supposed to owe all to him, he has the complete control of even her private fortune, should she have any. Bear in mind the fact that love matches are rare, and expediency the usual motive for entering the married state. The consequences are often life-long misery and unhappiness—the wife striving to keep up appearances, yet going her own way; the husband equally independent but less careful of his con- duct, for should he be unfaithful his punishment is light, whereas the wife's desertion of the paths of honor can be visited, should her husband choose to expose her guilt, with all the terrors of the law. In other lands the usual resource in such cases would be a divorce, which, however, does not yet exist with us (although warmly advocated by our past and present ministers of justice, Tommaso Villa and Guiseppe Zanardelli and other influential politicians), the only approach to it being a “legal separation.” The grounds on which even this is granted tend to shackle the woman. Should she apply for it she must prove ill-treatment on her husband's part, or open cohabitation with another woman. If her suit is granted, the man must restore to her hands the control over any private fortune which she had previous to her marriage. Should there be no such means of subsistence he is bound to give her an allowance proportionate to his income ; the children of their union, if there be any, are still under their mutual control; she must bear his name and remain his wife. On the other hand, should the appeal for separation be mutual, or proceed from the man, no restitution of her dower is enforced, and her husband is only bound to contribute suffi- cient for her bare support. Many women, rather than expose themselves to the obloquy following such a step, close their eyes and live their lives apart from, yet under the roof of, the man whom they promised to love, honor, and obey, unable to taste the sweets of that promise and bound to the harsh obedience. Is it likely that the offspring of such unhappy unions can be trained in purity and reverence for the ties of a home life which they never knew P Under the “penal code,” if a woman be guilty of crime her husband may, should he so please, take the law into his own hands and mur- der her or have her imprisoned for any period not exceeding two years; but she has no such revenge granted her, “legal separation” is again the only resource, fraught as ever with social ostracism to the woman and comparative impunity to man. Over that darkest social question of legal prostitution I would willingly draw a veil, but I can not give an adequate view of woman’s condition with- out alluding to this plague spot. The wretched women included in the term prostitutes, are divided into two classes—the free and the licensed. The former ply their degrading calling on their own terms; the latter are obliged to receive the first comer at a fixed price, on which the government levies a tax established by law. They are compelled meekly to submit to a medical examination, and, if necessary, are sent into a hospital, where they Organization. 213 are compelled to live with others of their class, and where, alas ! they can meet with no ladies, as in America and England, to offer them a word of Sympathy or comfort and try to reclaim them from their sinful life. Oh, that we had now in Italy a woman with the genius of Harriet Beecher Stowe, to describe vividly the horrors of this slavery of women. Then, perhaps, the hearts of our statesmen might be touched, and the shameful laws for legal- izing prostitution be blotted from the statute-book of a free and civilized people. The powers of the police are excessive, and open the door to tyr- annous abuses. We have now in Italy I, I 19 houses of ill-fame, with 6,643 inmates, besides 3,779 private lodgings. In one year the police inscribed in their infamous registers 3,850 unfortunate women, in addition to 3,779 who ply their trade privately. Of the former, 1,206 were minors. The government receives from the tax on prostitution 603, oos francs per annum, while the cost of the police and the hospitals for the state regulations of pros- titution is about 1,275, ooo francs a year. But I am happy to hear that the Professors Albanese and Tommasi Crudeli have been charged by our present President of the Council of Ministers, Signor Crispi, with the task of drawing up new rules for the sanitary law proposed by the late lamented Bertani, who declared in Parliament that he wished to abolish all this shame. Let us sincerely hope that the new law will be approved and an end put to this miserable state of things, and that a new era of liberty and morality may arise in favor of so many unfortunate, sinful women who, if charitably helped in the path of reform, may be led to abandon their vicious course and lead a virtuous and honest life. I have now, I think, given a fair, general idea of the difficulties Italian women have to contend against when struggling to prove themselves fit to be men's equals in the ordinary avocations of life. And, in conclusion, I must briefly allude to some of the large-minded men whose labors have been devoted to the removal of the existing inequalities of legislation. Mancini, the two De Forestas, Morelli, Bonghi, Bertani, De Sanctis, Coppino, Grimaldi, Depretis, Gabba, Lussana, and Moleschott have all in their day brought powerful influence and deep thought to our assistance, and it is to them that we owe the small advantages we are now at last enjoying. The work of most of them, however, lay principally in the halls of the Houses of Parliament. The outer public knew and cared little for a subject which they neither understood nor feared, and it was reserved for a promising young jurist, Count Massimo Collalto, to bring the question of women's rights before a mixed audience in Rome on February 7, 1886. His arguments, though bold and new to many of his hearers, met with the approval of the public press and of the more enlightened portion of Roman Society. One of the great hindrances to the spread of healthier ideas on the sub- ject has been the absence of any journal for women's special reading, from whose pages they could learn what their sisters were doing in foreign lands. 214 International Council of Women. Two attempts were made to supply this want in the issue of Za Ponna by Madame G. A. Baccari, at Bologna, and Za Corme/ia published at Florence, by Aurelia Folliero de Luna. Both were short-lived; the former owing to its open hostility to religion and advocacy of free thinking, and the latter to its extreme views on the whole question of woman's rights. One great defect was common to both, they pre-supposed an enlightened band of readers, fully alive to their own unsatisfactory condition of educa- tion and culture; they did not seek to point out a remedy, so, naturally, they effected little towards the realization of their object. Sanguine of a happier . result, I published in January, 1887, the first number of the Æassegna degli Znteressi Femminiſi, a copy of which has been already submitted to your International Council of Women. In its monthly issues I have striven to show, not only where the hardships of our condition lie, but to suggest alleviations, to interest my countrywomen in general topics, and bring them into contact with workers and thinkers in other parts of the world. My efforts have met with moderate success, and the extended circulation of my magazine, now in the hands of one of our influential publishers, has aroused the bitter ire of the ultra-clerical party. At first, private observa- tions reached my ears—those I could ignore, but when an open attack is made on my work in the chief organ of the Vatican, I can no longer keep silence, and must in the April number refute the assertion, that the patron- age and encouragement always extended to me by our gracious Queen is purely a child of my imagination, by publishing an answer which will appear with the Queen's openly declared approval. The papacy is in the throes of a bitter struggle for the recovery of tem- poral power, forever lost to it in 1870. Its influence over men is fast waning, but, by means of the confessional and the pulpit, its ministers have hitherto kept a firm hold on the women of their congregations, whose ignorance and superstition they foster. Now that a more successful attempt is being made to shake this power by extended education, all the weapons of personal bit- terness and calumny are pressed into service by the large section of narrow- minded clericals. Its nobler intellects stand aside powerless to check the stream, yet grieved at a spirit which can not separate the true interests of religion from political questions. However, I hope that with time and per- severing struggles we may obtain all the reasonable reforms in favor of the Italian woman, who has a right to reach the high intellectual and moral level which her sisters have reached in other nations. For much of the matter of this sketch I must acknowledge my obligations to my zealous and constant collaborateur, Count Massimo Collalto. Now I send, in the name of all Italian women, a sincere and warm greet- ing to the ladies assembled in the International Council of Women, in whose deliberations I am sorry not to have been able to join personally. Organization. 215 Mrs. GAGE. I now present to you Mrs. M. Louise Thomas, of New York, President of Sorosis. Mrs. THOMAs. Gentlemen and ladies: I am asked to speak to you on the subject of organization as applied to women's clubs. While we claim that Sorosis, the women's club of New York, is in a sense the oldest in the world, doubtless the idea existed long before. There were meetings of women many years before Sorosis was dreamed of. We had the Blue Stock- ing Club of Great Britain, and of those nearer at hand, in 1842, Margaret Fuller, who resided at that time in New York, and was on the editorial staff of the Zºribune, gathered around her a group of women to listen to her remarkable conversations; however, there was no permanent organization among them, and they fell apart when Margaret left New York. I had the pleasure of forming a club in Bridgeport, Conn., in 1863, which we called “Evenings Together.” In all of these clubs, however, gentlemen were admitted as participants. Sorosis was organized just twenty years ago; close to her came the New England Woman’s Club, then many others sprung up over the country and they still are growing faster and faster. Sorosis is strictly a woman's club ; that is, men are not admitted to any of its regular meetings, either social or business. It is not recognized in any by-law, but there is one day of the year that is Gentlemen's Day, when we invite them to dine with us, but upon no other occasion can any gentlemen be admitted to the meetings. I am not presenting these facts as being the best methods, but merely as facts. It is composed of literary and representative women, who meet for the interchange of thought; to be a help to each other, and to have a good time. We are working women in the best sense. The word Sorosis is purely Greek and signifies “an aggregation.” The strictest translation would be a “cumulous.” For example, this body before you is Sorosis in the strict sense of the word. It is an aggregation of thought and of interests and for different purposes. Botanically, we say it represents many fruits in one, as the breadfruit or the pineapple. Sorosis is not—I owe it to my constituents to say this—it is not a woman's suffrage association; it is rather conservative. There are three subjects that are never talked upon in the club—religion, politics, and woman's suffrage; not that there are not any women in the club who are deeply interested in all these questions, but because it is feared they might cause dissension. That many women in the club do feel a great sympathy in woman's suffrage is evident from the fact that three of its original incorporators are now present with us, with thirty-two of the members. Sorosis is alive to the influence of the advanced thought of the age ; it realizes, too, the changes that have come within twenty years; that the thought which in the beginning was a huge joke, that women should feel themselves competent to draw apart and sit with each other for mutual sympathy and the expression of their 216 International Council of Women. thoughts and feelings, is now not merely tolerated in the community, but has won recognition and respect. - I am sure you have been impressed, as I have been, with the different sub- jects presented, the experiences given to us, and I think every man and woman must have felt in listening to these reports a degree of concern that these noble women should have been giving their best work and that in every report there seems to be some lost chord. There always seems to be a point to my mind where there is a waste of power, and I ask myself, Why is it that women who see so clearly the needs of the race; why is it that all this enthusiasm and earnestness should not meet recognition ? In the mining centers of our country in Pennsylvania, locomotives of unusual size and power are used to draw the heavy loads of coal over the steep mountain grades. I have seen one of these huge engines, weighing from 50 to 60 tons, standing cold and still upon the track ; I have seen it moved by a single hand, holding a small bar of iron applied as a lever under one of the wheels, a movement which, if continued, and which, if assisted by the breathing steam and guided by the intelligent hand of the engineer, would speedily carry its precious weight of freight out into the world for the comfort of the people. Gentlemen and ladies, do we not all see the engine standing upon the track? Do not we all wonder why the lever is held from the hand of woman P Why the country and the world are still waiting P What is it that has brought these women out this week to tell us of their marvelous works P I have a list here of some of the purposes of which these women have come to tell us. First we have religion. We have those who were a few years ago the closest kind of sectarians bringing to us the needs of the people from a religious point of view. We have education, we have young women telling us the trouble they had to enter colleges, and their striving now to make the best of their opportunities, and we have philanthropies in all their phases; we have temperance, we have the industries, we have the professions, we have organizations and the power they give ; we have the legal, the Social, and political conditions. All these are laid before you by single voices, and yet each woman here represents a constituency ranging from half a million down to a few hundred or less. Now, friends, these works are all stand- ing—they are waiting for the little lever that starts the big engine. I hold in my hand a letter written by the Crown Princess of Denmark. It is written from the palace in her own hand and bears the royal signet and is addressed to Mrs. Cramer, sister of General Grant. AMALIEBORG PALACE, January 23, 1888. There is one thing to which I should so much like to draw your attention, though I have not the slighest idea if you yourself, or through your friends, might help a little. The subject will have your approbation I know, and, perhaps, if there was a chance, you would not mind some possible trouble, having kept such a faithful remembrance of your stay and friends in Denmark. Organization. 217 You know, I am sure, that there is to be a Congress at Washington (I believe in March) for women and their interests. There will be a delegate there, Mrs. Fred- eriksen, a Danish lady, who resides in Chicago. She is going to represent the Chris. tian Defense Society, the same as “Young Women’s Christian Association,” or the friend of young girls and the traveler's aid, with which associations it is correspond- ing, and, more or less, a branch of them—quite by itself, not under them. I have heard that in Sweden and Norway they are thinking of trying to get a home, a kind of home-mission house for girls or women. I think this idea good, and I know it is desired very much, so beg to get one for Danish ones, too, either in connection with the others, only that there should be a section or a hall or beds especially for them, if possible, which, perhaps, might prove to be cheaper than erecting one for Danes alone. But if it can not be sure otherwise than alone, there might be but a few rooms, with a kitchen and a Danish lady or woman at the head of it. In all this, Mrs. Frederiksen should try to awaken an interest. * From here we can not say how or if. That some one can do who is more initiated into American life and customs. All I should like to ask now is, that you kindly would help or counsel and interest others. Perhaps you had settled to be present or that you know some friends going to partake in it. I am afraid that I ask very much, too much of you. Then, pardon me, dear Mrs. Cramer, for old friendship’s - sake. (Signed) LOUISE. Mrs. GAGE. May I introduce to you Mrs. Jennie C. Croly, better known as “Jennie June,” who for twenty-seven years was the editor of Madame Z)emorest's Monthly 2 WOMEN'S CLUBS. Mrs. CROLY. The club idea was an advance upon the women's societies which had preceded it and which were usually devoted to some single ob- ject, and attracted those who sympathized with it. The “club '' had no such basis of union. It brought together women of many minds, of differ- ent degrees, and every shade of opinion. Women, having less experience than men, are usually more environed by prejudices, and it became part of the education of the club to take these down from their position as virtues. The club was necessarily many sided, and inspired work which of itself it could not accomplish without a single devotion which would have destroyed its character. Sorosis, the first woman's club, had no precedents; but it naturally grew into a many-sided and representative organization. When it was formed there were no State Aid Societies, or Industrial Unions, or working-girl's guilds. It made the first searching investigations into the conditions of foundlings and foundling hospitals, and published such full and complete reports as inspired the establishment of two foundling hospitals in the city of New York; it organized the first committee of inquiry into the condition of shop-girls in New York, the exactions of employers, and the means afforded for needed rest ; it published reports and gave names of those who were humane; it made the first report and drew up the first memorial presented, in 1876, to the University of the city of New York, and to the President and 15 º 218 International Council of Women. Trustees of Columbia College, asking that their doors should be opened to women,.and stating what had been done by the universities in England, and elsewhere. The minor details of a very diversified work it is not necessary to recapitulate, but it ought to be remembered that the “A. A. W.,” known, variously, as the “Woman’s Congress,” and the “Association for the Advancement of Women,” owes its origin entirely to Sorosis. The club idea seems to me to be not generally understood or its scope sufficiently considered in the organization of women. It has been said that the efforts of women are largely echoes of the activities of men. This is certainly not true of women's clubs. The Woman's club came together, was founded, officered, supported, maintained from the beginning till now, solely by women. No men entered into its acts or its consequences, except so far as it has influenced their own acts in their own clubs. The club-life of women has been distinctive; it has been, I think, quite unique in its way. When Sorosis was first formed in New York it was asked, What would be the object? Unless it was a sewing society or a missionary society, no one supposed that it could have an object. When women came together as a club, they at once began to consider their own needs. They began to con- sider what they most required, and they found that they required an education in methods, in the way to govern meetings, in the way of conducting socie- ties. They found that they wanted to learn, most of all, what women them- selves were doing, what the women of the world were engaged in, what they were thinking about, and that was the basis upon which Sorosis was formed. It was formed as a representative club of the ideas and interests of women. The only two clubs with which I am very familiar are those of New York and Philadelphia. A very interesting organization has grown out of the Philadelphia Club. This is the Working Women's Guild, which is now under the auspices of the New Century Women's Club. The Guild has a member- ship of upward of 7oo working girls. No one can be a member unless she works in a shop or factory, or in some way earns her own living by some form of manual labor. They have classes, and the club-house represents as many as nine or ten, some six or seven of which are in session every evening. Although the cooking class and the two sewing classes of dressmaking and fancy needle-work are popular, and the gymnasium is always filled, the most popular classes and the ones that brought the largest constituency are the literature and languages, and what is known as the thinking class. This thinking class is, I believe, unique in the history of women's clubs. They discuss philosophy; they discuss all those subjects which we have been accus- tomed to consider abstruse; and the insight, the intellectual strength which those girls display, would astonish many who consider themselves far in ad- vance of them in culture and education. The following interesting letter and sketch have been received from Germany. Such cordial responses encourage Organization. 219. us to believe that our efforts at international association of Women are not premature : To the International Council of Women : In reply to your kind invitation to attend the Fortieth Anniversary of the Woman Suffrage Movement, we can only regretfully decline, as we have already done in the columns of the organ of our association, New Paths, a copy of which has been sent you. The season of the year, as well as the condition of our society, prevent us sending a delegate, but we will, nevertheless, be with you in thought and sympathy. As every advance made in the service of humanity results in the gain of the entire race, so an effort in any land to elevate woman to a more worthy position, uplifts women everywhere. But it is well to show that in every country there are women who are ready to take part in such movements, and to strive, side by side with the women of other nations, toward the same high goal. Therefore, our union sends you a sisterly greeting, and begs you to extend it to all the members in your Council. To this we add a brief sketch of the movement begun in Germany forty years ago, and also of the work of our association, which is now in its twenty-third year. We will be very glad to receive any reports of the proceedings, which you will kindly forward to us for use in our journal. We send best wishes for the success of your very important meeting. - On behalf of the management of the Allgemeine Deutsche Frauen-Vereins: LOUISE. OTTO PETERS. ALOISE WINTOR. AUGUSTE SCHMIDT. HENRIETTE GOLDSCHMIDT. J. FREIDERICI. LEIPZIG, March, 1888. - THE WOMAN MOVEMENT IN GERMANY r848–1888. The beginning of the woman movement in Germany may, like that of our American sisters, be referred to the year 1848. At that time a great revolu- tion went all over the world, which did not leave the German women un- moved. They were swept with the tide, and, in addition to their usual work of benevolence, determined to show the world their own true worth and con- vince men of their rightful importance and position. Forming unions, they began to take charge of kindergartens, and even of a high school in Ham- burg. Men joined them in this educational movement and helped to make it a success. In Saxony Louise Otto published and edited for four years a journal which gave all the news concerning woman's rights. In 1865 was held in Leipzig a convention, the object of which was not charity, but the intellectual elevation of woman. In the same year the Uni- versal German Women’s Union founded, under the management of Auguste Schmidt, a home and school for poor girls and orphans in which they were taught to make their own living. From the date of its organization until 1872 the Union published a small paper reporting its work. Since that our organization, as well as the woman movement in general, has made slow but sure progress against great opposition. The journal issued by our Union, AVew Ways, edited by Louise Otto and Auguste Schmidt (Leipzig), has for 220 International Council of Women. its object the advancement of women in all lines of progress, but in Ger- many we have to work with great tact, and by conservative methods; many copies of our journal, especially those numbers treating of woman’s rights, have been distributed all over North and South Germany. At the time of the organization of our National Union, local unions were formed in many cities and smaller towns. Their special work is the build- ing and management of schools for poor girls, in which not only the ordi- mary studies of grammar Schools are taught, but cooking, sewing, etc. They urge girls to realize in their lives the motto, “Work is an honor to women.” Almost simultaneously with the formation of our association was that of the Loette Union (with which we are on the most friendly terms), which originated and manages the industrial schools to be found all over Berlin. * * * - For years our association has been preparing a book upon the legal rela- tions of men and women. We have sent to the Reichstag one petition on the subject, but it was not acted upon. We have made several efforts to have women admitted to the universities. We have had, since 1879, a “Mutual Relief Fund ; '’ the interest of this capital is now used to send girls to the Swiss schools and universities, but as soon as it is allowed it will be enlarged to found a German university for women equal to the best now existing for men. The difference between our position and that of our American sisters is largely due to the fact that you live in a republic, we in a monarchy—you in a young country where everything is new, we in a land centuries old, where the ideas and habits of thought are, so to speak, incrusted in the people. Mrs. GAGE. You will now hear from Mrs. May Wright Sewall, of Indian- apolis. Mrs. SEWALL. So many points have been already touched on the circum- ference of this enlarging sphere of woman that it seems almost impossible to find two more to which it will be profitable to call your attention, in con- nection especially with organization as a feature of modern life. - Organization grows out of the principle of division of labor, and also is the result of the expression of the many-sidedness of human nature. This many-sidedness has long been known to be an attribute of man. Men were organized in this country years ago to represent its material interest. In my own rather centrally situated city scarcely can I pick up a morning paper without seeing an announcement of some association of men that will convene that day in Indianapolis, or the next week, or the next month. The wool-growers, or the horse-breeders, or the poultrymen’s protective association will convene, and so on through all the forms of labor that engross men's thoughts. Be they small or large, or apparently of little moment, they are associated together for the protection of their own inter- ests. In the beginning of these organizations it was not so much a union Organization. 221 of those whose interests were one because of the sympathy which bound them together, as it was of those whose interests were one, to separate from those who were opposed to them. But the women have organized themselves less for material results and more for the objects affecting the spiritual interests of humanity. We have found them organized for the promotion of literature, for the study of his- tory, political science, art, philanthropy, and the charities; in all these mani- fold ways for the enlargement of their own interests and for the protection of the spiritual interests of humanity. Undoubtedly there was in that which led them to combine something of the same feeling which originally ani- mated combinations of men who were organized for the promotion of mate- rial interests; something of the feelings that they were separated from the rest of human kind, and that the hands of other women were against them. Certainly that was true when women were first organized to secure for them- selves the political rights that belong to citizens of this Republic; and so in the beginning women were classed by the organizations with which they stood, and many a time have I heard the question asked of a woman when she was introduced to another, “Is she suffrage 2 Is she temperance?” In our city of Indianapolis it is not an infrequent question, when a lady is introduced. to another, to have her ask: “Are you art 2 Are you literature ? Are you history? Are you orphan asylum ?” and so on, to see if they can find out where they belong together, where they touch in their interests. But now we are having in these later days the happy illustration of the truth so charm- ingly set forth in that wonderful little volume of Edward Everett Hale— “Ten Times One Are Ten.” I supposed men always knew, even in those remote days, when their mathematics stopped at the rule of three, that ten times one are ten. But only in recent days have we grasped the idea that in the realm of spiritual mathematics ten times one are more surely ten than in the material world. In the material world there may come abatements of value, the value of to-day may be discounted to-morrow, or it may be above par; but in the spiritual world every time the multiplication is made the product is surely ten times one are ten, and ten times ten are one hun- dred, and ten times one hundred are one thousand, and ten times one hun- dred thousand are one million. Is this a weary sum to you? To me it is an illuminating one. Going over all the multiplications of this little volume, we have certainly found that ten times one hundred thousand are a million every time ; and in the various interests represented here there are more than a million of women who represent these organized movements. Now, coming to this point of many-sidedness, originally we expected to find the suffrage adherents in one tent, the temperance under another, liter- ature under another, and those who were the dispensers of charities each under their own tents. But in time there were frequent communications, passing from tent to tent, all the occupants of these several tents beginning 222 International Council of Women. to feel themselves within one camp. Here is the application of our prin- ciple: The club existed, perhaps, at first because of a single interest in which many were absorbed. Then the suffrage women became absorbed in tem- perance, and the temperance women became absorbed in suffrage, and those who were interested in art were becoming interested in the charities, and the women who were at first interested in charities were found also interested in art, and charities and art became mutually interested. So one woman can no longer be asked, Are you suffrage, or are you temperance, or "are you identified with any one thing? because she is becoming interested in all. I hope the time will soon come when we can all reply—in regard to those of whom we have questioned, Is she a suffrage, is she this, or is she that ?—that she is a woman, and having all these interests represented in one, feeling the recognition of the community of interests binding them all together, a com- munity of women, bound to neither one thing nor another, but all daugh- ters of the living God. Mrs. GAGE. You will now hear from a lady who can surely tell you all there is to tell of organization, Miss Frances E. Willard. Miss WILLARD [holding up her hand with outspread fingers]. You see that ? Just look at that. It doesn’t amount to much. But look at that [holding up a clinched fist]; that is the difference between isolated, segre- gated, passive womanhood, and organized, vigorous, harmonious womanhood. All the muscles, all the fingers in that little ball doubled up like that, and what a whacking blow they deal against all wrongs I am afraid Amanda Deyo will think I am a little warlike, but I believe she and I only wish to lift this war and carnage up to victory. We only wish to turn all the bullets into printer's type ; we only wish the war to be a war of words, for words are wings; they are full of lightning. Every brain the open furrow, every word the seed cast in, and you have humanity brought to a different plane ; but you can’t do it alone ; you can’t do it unless you come along together ; it is easier to climb up together. As the little girl climbing up a slippery hill on a wintry day, reaching up her paddies to her taller sister, said, “Oh, it is easier taking hold of hands.” Somebody who has studied these things a great deal said to me : “You can tell a harmo- nious and organizing nature, because the involuntary position of the hands will be like that” [folded together]. Now, I notice Mary Eastman stood that way. I notice that women, except when they are on their society style and manner, stand that way. I believe the bringing of one hand up to the other so that they can grasp something is the mighty symbol of this Woman’s Council. To me it is the grandest thought that ever flew out of a woman’s brain and caught enthusiasm out of a woman’s heart. See a little, lonesome, stray snowflake come down through the air ; it falls and melts and is no more. Now see others come along talking in that Organization. 223 has evidently got something on its mind, and after awhile it is joined by others, and, if it organizes its attack, it will make a drift thirty feet high that will stop that fifty-ton engine of Mrs. Thomas and send it back crouch- ing on its haunches, and it can’t do a thing. And if into that great snow- storm you get a breeze, then it will whirl it all away in a second like the blizzard you had. Now, women are the snowflakes. And the organized attack is against this old, hoary-headed, materialistic, conservative way of doing things. And the mighty breeze that shall set them flying is the mighty sisterhood, and it will bring in all that is good, and true, and pure. It has been the curse of humanity in the past that half the wisdom, more than half the ability, more than half the gentleness did not find any organic expression. Now it is getting expression, and we are here not only to see it and sit about and twirl our thumbs and watch it coming, but we are here to just put in our mighty force to make it come. Each woman that has just sat here and lent a kind attention has helped it. Each one who has gone away and spoken a kind word has helped it. Each one that has lifted an aspiration toward the great heart that holds the world has helped it. - \ The great power of organization for women is, that it brings them out; it translates them from the passive into the active voice; the dear, modest, cling- ing things didn’t think they could do anything, and, lo and behold ! they found out they could. They come to you with a quiver of the lip, and look at you so hopeful and expectant, and wonder if they could do something; and a year or two after, you hear them with deep voice and perfect equipose telling their dearest thought to a great audience, or you see them in the silent charities, carrying out their noble thought toward humanity. You know what mighty power there is in the snow. Then you go through this chemical process of the organizing power, and how easy and simply you can dearn to do it by seeing others do it. It is like the taking of a photograph— first, the negative, which you don’t know anything about ; then it is exposed to the sun and colored, and brought out in full perspective. It took a good many years to bring the women of this country out into a perspective of an International Council. - - - They were not great enough at first, they were not large enough. Boston gave us the rationale of all this in those tender words of Julia Ward Howe, in that grandiose but perfectly clear philosophy of Mary Eastman, and in the sharp, clear-cut utterances of Abby Morton Diaz we have had it all set before us in its emphasis this morning. Now shall we set to work and make it true? Shall we merge our differences, accommodate each to the other for this great and beautiful mosaic of the International Council and the National Council P I believe we shall. A National society—and of course I think right straight away of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, that I know so well—is a great pineapple, with lots of locals and auxiliaries, 224 International Council of Women. like bunches out all over the pineapple; that makes the National Society. Then we have got a great, splendid basket, and we are going to put all those pineapples into the basket, and that basket is the International Council. Let us each and all say that we will help lift it up and put it in the great pantheon where all the fruits of civilization, where all the beauties of its grand aggregate should go. * * * Remembering what Mrs. Croly told us, there is a club that I would like to tell you more about—a guild of college girls, the Alphi Phi, that is now established in some of our leading colleges. In Syracuse, connected with the university, they have built themselves a club-house ; they have a matronly lady to be their mother, and they get their board and all the sense of com- fort dear to a woman, and I warrant you there is no tobacco smoked in that club. I wish young ladies from other schools would go and do likewise ; it is a grand thing to do—to study every way we can how we can combine to lift each other up, and never let any one down. To my mind, organization is the one great thought of creation; it is the difference between chaos and order; it is the constant occupation of God, and, next to God, the greatest organizer on this earth is the mother. Woman is a great diplomatist; in the democracy of home woman is a harmonizer, who, when things get mixed, talks to everybody and tells them to make up; she sets her home in order and fits this to that, and sees that it has a unity and entirety; and man—he didn’t mean any harm, but he wasn’t any such harmonizer as woman, and down here on the plane of force he said he would go and get up that wonderful club of government, and he has made it only half a club because, in the nature of things, he couldn't do it any other way. But when woman comes to stand beside him in law, then we shall learn what society might be, what goes to make a world. We have only had guessings and etchings and monochromatics yet; wait till you see the chromo and the full and beautiful oil painting. It never will come till you get woman's eye and man's eye brought to bear together. You will never get the grand perspective, the telescopic view, until you get their eyes side by side. We want to make of humanity's heart that dual heart that shall beat as one. We want to make it the sun-glass that brings all the di- vergent rays of power to one focus, and through organization we will set our glass so as to bring the rays of power into convergence, and make them burn and blaze on every wrong until all error shall be swept away and the blessed sunshine of truth stream upon us, and we shall say: “Lo and behold ! humanity is as God said it should be : made in His own image, male and female, with dominion over all the earth.” Miss ANTHONy. After telling you that everybody else must send their notices to the Zribune, and not bother this Council with them, I am going to give you one from the White House, signed by Secretary Lamont. He says: “I am directed to say, in reply to your note of inquiry, that the Presi- Organization. 225 dent and Mrs. Cleveland will receive the women of the International Council on Friday, to-morrow afternoon, at half-past three o'clock.” With regard to organization, if Miss Foster were here she would second me in saying that the greatest hindrance in the way of securing a represen- tative demonstration of all the lines of work in which women are occu- pied has come from the fact that they are not organized. We will take, for instance, the Women's Clubs. They are all over this nation. In New Orleans there is a splendid club, in Kansas there is one containing 6oo of the best cultured women of that State. When it was decided to invite Sorosis, we thought it was the oldest club, but the New England Club vies with Sorosis in having been organized a little earlier; but no matter who was first, somebody must be first, and I have noticed that when any movement comes into the world it springs up in a dozen places at the same time. This is remarkable, but it is true. History shows that every woman who has written of her society, or herself, has always said it was the first time it was ever done by any woman. And the reason they feel in this way is because there has been no association ; each woman has stood alone in the world, and so has thought herself first in everything. Mrs. Gage then adjourned the Convention. THURSDAY, MARCH 29, 1888. EVENING SESSION. LEGAL conDITIONs. Miss Anthony presiding. Music by the orchestra. Invoca- tion, Mrs. Susan H. Barney. The CHAIRMAN. I have the pleasure of introducing to you Mrs. Dever- eux Blake, President of the New York State Suffrage Association. LEGAL DISARILITIES. - Mrs. BLAKE. A general impression prevails, especially among foreigners, that in this country the legal disabilities of women have been largely removed. But this is very far from being the case. Even in Massachusetts, usually considered so progressive, only recently, and after a long fight, has the right been secured to a widow to be buried beside her husband in the family lot; and, despite all the prating about the home as woman's appro- priate place, in a large part of our country a married woman has no legal home. After her husband's death “the widow may remain forty days in her husband’s residence,” so runs the law in more than half our States. In some of the Western States a modification of this provision has taken place. Under the “Homestead Act” the home always belongs to the mother. A married man in those States can not own the home in which he lives ; mar- riage makes it his wife's. The English common law, with all the cruel provisions which grew up in the darkness of the Middle Ages, was the basis of American jurisprudence. But many of the oppressive provisions of the English common law have been modified, in most of the States, so far as to secure to a married woman the right to her property and separate earnings. But the iron rule of the English law still controls in some of the Northern and several of the Southern States; and under its provisions the wife is literally merged in the husband—she has no separate existence, and marriage is civil death. Blackstone says that “woman is a perpetual minor ; ” that “the husband and wife are one, and that one the husband,” and this is literally true. A married woman can not sign a contract, can not rent a house ; absolutely, she has no civil existence. If she goes into business, every dollar that she makes belongs to her husband. If she works outside of the house and draws a salary for her services, all that she earns is his. If she is injured by an accident, her husband Sues the re- sponsible person for the loss of his wife's services. In the language of Pe- truchio, he may truly say: “She is my goods, my chattel; she is my house, My household stuff, my field, my barn, My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything.” - Legal Conditions. 227 Her legal position is accurately described by the words. She is nothing but an adjunct of her husband in life, his relict after death. Recently, at as public dinner, the list of guests was published, with this statement appended: “Those having stars attached to their names were accompanied by ladies; ” the women were of so little consequence they were not worth mentioning. Small wonder that this should be the estimate in which they are held, after centuries of common law rule. But the most cruel of all the provisions of this code is that which gives the children to the father, and, strange as it may seem, while in so large a portion of our States the law has been so modified as to give a woman the control of her own property and her own earnings, there are only three States in the Union—Kansas, New Jersey, and . Iowa–where a woman has any claim to her own children. In all the other States the husband has the absolute right to bind out the children or to give them away, or by will to appoint a guardian for them after his death ; the mother has no legal rights whatsoever to control the destinies of the children for whom she has risked death. There is a positive premium on dishonor in these States; the poor girl whose child is born out of wedlock owns it, the burden and the shame are hers; the honorable wife has no right to her child for a single instant of its existence; even when it is under her heart it is not hers. Can human slavery go deeper ? Of course this law is of small concern in really happy homes, and we have so many of these that we sometimes forget the others. But where the couple are inharmonious, where the husband is tyrannical or unkind, this enactment is a fruitful source of misery to women. I am ashamed to say that, with all our boasted advances in New York, we have this law in full force, and with especial Severity of provisions. A man may will away his child though he die before it be born, and strangers. can take it from its mother's arms so soon as it has a separate existence. Ah, you may say, such cruel provisions are never enforced, but they are. A poor young German some years ago married an industrious American girl, who supported him until he died. He was under age, but wished to make a will, and to humor a dying man's caprice she paid a lawyer for draw- ing the instrument. Some months after the boy-husband's death a baby was born to her, and when the little creature was a few months old she found that her husband's will gave the child to his parents, in Michigan. Protests and tears were unavailing, for her own child was not hers legally, and strangers took it as their own. In New York divorce is very difficult, granted only for one cause, and where the parents live apart the children belong to the father, unless a court interferes in the mother's favor. Where husband and wife are sepa- rated, the father can keep the children, and I have known instances where the husband, accompanied by a lawyer and a police officer, has torn a child, /his child from the arms of its mother. - - 228 International Council of Women. To return to the question of the joint earnings of the marriage copartner- ship. One of the most unjust of the legal disabilities under which woman suffers is, that she has no protection whatsoever in the possession of her share of the family income. While wives are secured the right to their earnings outside of the home, they can not legally claim a dollar for their life-long services within the home. Even where a couple marry in their youth and labor side by side on a farm or in a store, the woman working just as much as the man, and perhaps more, because the cares of household and children are added to business cares, every dollar that they both earn is legally the husband's. This is the law in every State and Territory of the Union. The importance of the headship of man is maintained by men, even the most liberal. Last year the legislature of Ohio adopted a new code of laws, which, it was boasted, gave to the married women of that State equal rights with men; but from the beginning to the end there was not a word in it with regard to the joint earnings, and one of the sections gravely declared that “the husband is the head of the family,” as if any law could make a man the superior, where his natural gifts did not entitle him to supremacy The proud Scottish chief said, “Where McGregor sits, there is the head of the table,” and the God-given endowment of intellectual power crowns sometimes a queen. This injustice of denying to the wife any legal share in the family income has been a constant factor in the subjection of woman. There can be no independence without pecuniary independence. Yet look at the position of men's wives; they toil day and night in the care of their families, and yet never feel that they have any right to money in payment for their labors. Whatever they have the husband “gives '' them ; they are pensioners on his bounty, not the rightful sharers of his purse. And who are they who thus devote their lives to unrecompensed toil? They are the mothers of the race, performing the most important service that is rendered by any citizen to the State ; for what is the work of the farmer, the shopkeeper, the lawyer, or even the editor, compared to the work of the mother who bears and rears the coming generation ? How much the race suffers to-day from the pro- longed subjection of the mothers we can never know. Every man is the child of his mother as well as of his father, and whatever injustice, whatever of degradation she has endured, is reflected by cowardice, by meanness, and by loss of self-respect in her son. Men prate much of an eight-hour law for their work. Do they ever agitate for an eight-hour law for their wives? Though I did hear of an industrious body who, rising at four o’clock, labored diligently for eight hours, and when her husband came home at noon for his dinner told him that she was practicing what he preached. Few wives have so much independence. Day after day, year after year, they toil patiently, not even venturing to think that they are entitled to any money of their own, doing the mightiest work Legal Conditions. 229 that is done in this world without earning anything by their labor, their sagacity, their frugality, their energy bringing no reward, and too often end- ing their days in an old age of dependence and humiliation. In the courts of justice throughout the land women have no protection by the presence of their sex on the bench, in the jury-box, or at the bar. The right of trial by a jury of their peers, which has been held so essential a pro- tection, has been denied to women, except in a few instances in the Territories; and we find in the statute-books of every State that women are held to full accountability for violation of the laws, in which they are denied an equal voice. Women are either grown up, or they are children; if they have reached the full stature of citizenship, then are they entitled to the protec- tion which the exercise of the rights of citizenship gives; if they are chil- dren, then they should be dealt with as children. We do not hang minors in this country, but we do hang women. The only legal equality that has been always accorded to them is the equality of the prison and the gallows. Thus, briefly, I have endeavored to review some of the anomalies and cruel- ties of woman's legal status in a republic that boasts of its freedom from all oppression. - The dome of yonder proud Capitol, in which our national laws are made, is surmounted by a statue of Liberty in the majestic form of woman. Year after year she stands there, patiently holding the aegis and the spear; the shield that has not yet been able to cover her woman's heart from blows, the spear that as yet is powerless for her protection. Each new dawn that flushes her helmet with rosy light brings nearer the day when she shall no longer be a helpless mockery; when all the clouds of custom and prejudice shall be rolled away, and the Sun's early rays, vivifying all nature, shall reveal the goddess with her shield raised and her spear set in rest, and freedom for woman shall mean justice everywhere, encircling the globe. The CHAIRMAN. We have been hearing about the common law of En- gland from an American. Now we will have something of it from an En- glish woman, Mrs. Alice Scatcherd, of Leeds, who is a delegate from the Edinburgh National Society for Women's Suffrage and from the Women's Liberal Associations of Darlington, Yorkshire, and Southport. LEGAL CONDITIONs of woMEN IN THE THREE KINGDOMS OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. - Mrs. SCATCHERD. Mrs. Devereux Blake has not in the least overstated to you the brutality of the old common law of England. This morning some one said to me in the hotel, “I hope you will not be too bitter toward the men to-night.” I shall, at the outset of what I am going to say, assure you that I am not actuated in the slightest degree by any feelings of bitterness toward men, nor, I am sure, was the last speaker, But we must state these things in order that we may prove our case, and I hope that you felt as shocked as I did when I heard Mrs. Blake. 230 International Council of Women. In speaking to you about the legal condition of women in the Three King- doms I shall divide my subject under four headings—the Industrial Rights of Women, the Property Rights of Women, the Family Rights of Women, and the Personal Rights of Women. First, as to industry. During the last forty years many trades and profes- sions were opened to women. We rejoice with you in these new paths of usefulness. But, at the same time, with us, we have seen another thing going on which we deeply deplore, and that is the legislative restriction of woman's labor. Parliament is, year by year, interfering more and more in every department. Englishmen would not submit to have their labor handicapped in that way for a single week. They have votes; they can protect their rights. We have no votes, and we can not protect our rights. This legislative restriction of labor is a very serious one for English women. The first act which greatly interfered with women's labor was the Factory Act of 1874. We were told that it was to be the last great interference with woman’s labor. It told a woman exactly how long she might work, at what time, and almost where she could get her meals. But in 1878 there came a further act of restriction, which was called the “Consolidation of Workshops Act.” And now all the dressmakers, all the large factories, all the seam- stresses, and places where a fair number of women are employed are under government inspection. Women have been turned out of the brick-fields of England, and one or two attempts have been made to turn them out of the chain and nail-making trades. There is only one instance where women have successfully and at once resisted legal interference, and that was the Pit Brow women of Lancashire, where there are very large coal-mines. Women are employed very largely on the brows of the pit to push the coal-carts and work in various ways. Some good men though it was not fit work for women. Of course, this is always done with the best intentions, but it lessens their wages and lessens their freedom, and we do not thank men for acting upon these good intentions. The women could not see the evil of legislative interference before it was proposed actually to sweep them away at once from the pit-brows. They couldn’t have their living taken away from them, so they protested most vigorously, and three or four of them went up to the House of Commons and that piece of injustice really was prevented. Women can not see the evil of interference with their labor when it only lessens their hours of work; but the right to limit woman’s labor implies the denial that she shall labor at all. Women are hungry as well as men, and one of the first rights of a human being is to be able to supply his or her hunger. And we say it is most unjust and outrageous that the right to supply a woman's hunger should be dependent upon the will of another. - - Then as to the property rights of women. Single women in England, Scotland, and Ireland have the same property-holding power as men. There \ Legal Conditions. - 231 - is one law which is unjust to all women, and that is the law of intestacy. If a man die without making a will, his male relatives come in for a much larger share of his property than do his female relatives; if a woman die without making a will, again her male relatives come in for a larger share of her prop- erty than her female relatives. For instance, if a man die without children and he has no near relative, one would naturally suppose that his money would go to his wife; not so ; only half goes to her. Who gets the other half? The crown; but if a woman die without making a will, and she has no chil- dren or near relatives, and I know two or three such cases, who gets the whole of the money? Why, the husband, of course. Before 1871 the property-holding rights of married women were simply mi/. The law was about as bad as it could be—a relic of the old barbarous days when women literally were the slaves of men, their goods and chattels. In 1871, after long years of very arduous labor, a bill was introduced which had many bad clauses, but one exceedingly good clause. Before that time every penny that a woman earned belonged to her husband, so that if a woman had been out charring and working by the day, and had earned two shillings or a half a dollar, the husband could claim the money, and not the wife. But this bill of 1871 had this one good point about it—that it did give to married women the money which they earned. So we accepted it because it brought comfort and blessing to thousands and millions of homes in our country. Why men have been so afraid to allow women to have what is their own I can not tell. Where should a good wife be likely to spend her money but on her husband and her children 2 We do not say because men have money that they therefore cease to be affectionate parents or spend their money away from home, and I am quite sure that the possession of any property will not induce women to act differently from what the men do. We had the House of Lords to thank for the delay which has taken place in the passing of the Married Woman's Property Act. They have most curious ideas as to the liking of any married women to have money in their pockets at all. They said, for instance, in this bill that if a woman had £200 left to her she might have that sum, but if it was over £200 she wasn’t able to take care of it, and was not to have it unless it was specified for her special use. It is the law of England that talks about separate use ; we wives never talk about separate use of our money. Lord Fraser said that he, for one, couldn't see what a woman wanted to have money in her pocket for to spend as she pleased. Perhaps, if Lord Fraser had at one time possession of a large amount of property, and had been suddenly deprived of it because he had entered into the honorable state of marriage, he would understand why he would like to have some money in his pocket to spend, and why women would like it. Wives were regarded as the property of men. A dressmaker was injured not many years ago in a railway accident near Dublin, and seriously injure 232 International Council of Women. too. She had been separated from her husband for three or four years, and had maintained herself by dressmaking. As a married woman could not sue in the courts in her own name, she had to obtain the consent of her hus- band, and he, seeing that some money was likely to be awarded, gave the consent. He went into court. Ninety-five pounds damage was awarded. Who got that? Not the woman who was injured, but the man whose prop- erty she was. Baron Dows remarked at that time: “This forms a very strong argument for those women who are striking for political rights.” In 1883 a far better married woman’s property act was passed ; and now when a woman marries she does not lose control of her property. A man used to say—he does so now—“ with all my worldly goods I thee endow.” And then he used to take possession of everything the woman had, even to the gown she stood up in. Since 1883 if a woman marries she retains con- trol of her own property. Before 1883, if a woman had one hundred pounds and a man had one hundred pounds, immediately they were married the man had two hundred pounds and she had none. Well, we didn’t like that, ladies and gentlemen, and now we are glad to say the law is altered, and a woman may buy and sell, save or dispose, or will or invest her property as she likes. She may even have a bank account. I never shall forget when, some years ago, I went to one of our banks in the town of Leeds to open a banking account. There was some little talk among the officers, and at last two gentlemen were brought to me, and said: “Is your husband with you; has he come to say he gives his consent?” I said, “No.” They said: “Have you brought a note from him to say that he gives his consent to your open- ing an account here?” I said: “No ; don’t you care to have women's banking accounts?” They said: “Well, without the full consent of the husband, we have often a great deal of trouble with women's bank ac- counts.” I don’t blame them. It is the state of the law that gives them so much trouble about banking accounts of women. - A woman now can even make a contract with her husband, and we are hoping that under this new law and the power of making a contract with your own husband to enter into business with him, that that may remedy the evil ; because it is monstrous to think that a woman works for years and years side by side with a man, saving his money, making him money, doing her very utmost to push the business; that then that man has a right to leave her penniless. It is true even yet that an English husband has the right to leave his wife penniless. It is monstrous, I think, that where husband and wife have lived together in unity that he has the right to do such a thing. It is not a case of what good men won’t do ; it is a case of what bad men will do. This in regard to England and Ireland. A very good measure was passed for Scotland, which meted out a very large share of justice to the wives there. A Scotch woman can not buy stock or invest her money as easily as an English woman. I was talking with Legal Conditions. 233 some American ladies yesterday, and, speaking of these matters, one turned to another and said: “Just imagine her being so glad because they have got their own property. Why, we have had it here for a long time. It is not a thing for us to rejoice about.” I am very glad that in many of the States of your Union much more justice has prevailed than has prevailed with us, and we shall not cease to rejoice about it for a whole generation, I suppose. Then I ought to say there are many people who work very hard to have alterations made in this law, but for the last twelve or fifteen years what we have had is due largely to the efforts of two noble women, namely, Mrs. Jacob Bright, wife of the member from Manchester, and Mrs. Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy. Before 1886 a woman hadn't any rights in the family whatsoever. Up to that time a father might give away his child during the lifetime of the mother ; he might will away that child at his death ; he might send it to any school that he chose and have it brought up in any religion that he liked. It is said that it is the mother's duty to teach the child to pray at her knees. Why, the child belonged entirely to the father and she had no right to say what he should be taught. In fact, the very expression in the English law shows that. It says: “By nature and by nurture the father is the sole parent.” Such a condition of things was monstrous, and yet the alterations we have secured leaves the law far from what it ought to be. Still we have made a great step forward. Now, a mother, at the father's death, is considered the guardian of her child. Before, a lawyer always had to ask his client, “Do you leave your wife the guardian of your child P’’ Doesn’t it sound monstrous to ask if the mother was to be the guardian of her own child? But now the wife is the guardian, even if her husband appoint another guardian—that is, she is joint guardian, of course; and if she be a widow she can now appoint a guardian to act for her child in case of her death. Formerly, she could not do this. And, supposing the father is not a good man, she can on her death during his lifetime, appoint a guardian to act with him. The courts, of course, would refuse to let such a guardian act, if the man were a good man. So there is a good safeguard against any capricious appointment of guardian to act with the father. - - Thus far the most important clause of the new act is this: It says that the courts shall take into consideration the wishes of the mother as well as of the father. It sounds even strange to my own ears to speak in this way—the wishes of the mother as well as of the father. Already that clause has brought deep blessing in two or three cases to perfectly innocent and good wives, if I had time to tell you about them, and will do to many more. Just before I left home a case occurred, about which I know very little, but my husband, who is a lawyer, was called upon by one of the Roman Catholic priests. A woman was dying, and she wished to leave her money for the use of her child 16 234 International Council of Women. during its lifetime, and we did not know quite what was to be done with it after- wards, but the priest wished to know what was the power of the father, who had not been a good man, over the child, and my husband came to me and said: “Have you got a copy of the new Custody of Infants Act 2'' I had, and we found that this poor mother had the power to appoint a co-guardian for her child with her husband. Under this act the poor have the same advan- tages as the rich, because this act can be tried in the county courts of England and the sheriff's courts of Scotland, and it applies to England, Ire- land, and Scotland. This act was mainly the work of one woman ; certainly nine-tenths of the energy which was brought to bear on this question was through one woman, Mrs. Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy. The mothers of England owe that woman a debt of which they are scarcely yet aware. As to the personal rights of women, John Stuart Mill says: “Over his own per- son, over his own body and Soul, the individual is sovereign.” It may be so in the case of men, but it is certainly not so in the case of women. We have had in England for nearly twenty years laws which outrage, in the person of woman, every principle of liberty and freedom ; laws which con- demn the women of our seaport towns to a life worse than abject slavery. I refer to the infamous Contagious Diseases Acts. It is owing to the heroic efforts of one noble woman, who warned the English women of the prison doors that were closing upon them at the time those acts were introduced ; it is owing chiefly to her heroic conduct, that those acts were swept away and En- gland freed from such a disgrace—Mrs. Josephine Butler. In a circular issued by the Executive Committee of this great Council there occurred these words: “The position of woman anywhere affects the position of woman everywhere.” Never were truer words uttered. In many of the En- glish dependencies and in one or two of the English colonies these infamous acts are still in force. We never know when the cloven foot of State regu- lation may show itself; we have to be ever vigilant and on the alert, because so - - --- - • * - long as these acts remain in any part of our dominion, no English woman is safe. No, So long as they remain in any country no women are safe, because, to the disgrace of our legislators be it said, they copied these infamous laws from France ; and it was the religious fervor of English women which swept the laws away, and we pray God they may never return. Another point which I would like to show is that the condition of woman anywhere affects her condition everywhere. A few years ago a young man of good family in the north of England, called Mr. Christopher Bethel, went out to the South of Africa and there married a young girl belonging to the Barolong tribe. He married her according to all the rights of the tribe; he fulfilled every obligation which the chiefs of that tribe could demand of him. It was an honorable marriage in every way. Six months after his marriage he died, and three months after his little daughter was born. Meantime his father in England had died and had left some money to his Legal Conditions. 235 son in South Africa. This little girl was the heir to this money, and when the case was tried in the English courts to see whether she should receive it or not the English lawyers looked at each other, and they said that it was a Barolong marriage, and that it was not an English marriage, and that a mar- riage in the Barolong sense was not a marriage in the English sense ; that a marriage in the English sense was not a marriage in the Barolong sense; and so we were told that it was a marriage and that it was not a marriage, and the end of it all was that this was deemed not a marriage in the English sense, and the judge hoped that the family of the husband would look after and make some provision for his little girl. I appeal to all women, what does this mean P. It means that hundreds and thousands of Englishmen who go out into our dependencies—to Burmah, to India, to South Africa—may contract these marriages with native women there according to the rites of their tribe, and when they come home they have a right to cast off their children and wives, if they like, because it is not a marriage according to the English sense. I say that girl's case is my case, and the position of that woman in South Africa affects every woman in the British Dominions. Do you suppose that men who can go and do such things as that would be hon- orable husbands for our daughters? We think not. The laws of divorce are still grossly unequal. A husband in England has only to prove one thing—adultery—and he gets a divorce. A wife has to prove two things—both adultery and cruelty—on the part of the hus- band. There is a gross inequality. In Scotland the law is much more just, because it gives divorce for the adultery of either spouse and for willful desertion of either spouse. By willful desertion is meant absenting yourself for three years. In Ireland there is no divorce at all; only judicial separa- tion. You must know that I am one of those who would allow divorce for other things than adultery. Why force a person to commit a disgraceful act which damns him in the opinion of society in order to loosen a tie that has become intolerable? I have seen cases where the woman has been a per- sistent profligate; where the husband had no comfort whatever in his home; where his children were utterly neglected, and where the home was a mere name. Should not the husband have a divorce from such a wife P And in the same way with a woman who has a drunken husband; and if a father persistently refused to maintain his family and neglected them, I would grant a divorce for that. I think that Ireland is better than England in the point I am going to name. We have an unenviable notoriety for wife-beaters and wife-kickers in England, especially in the north. Women at one time were burned, had their hair pulled and their eyes knocked out, and were stamped upon, and other things, all too horrible to tell; and it was only in 1878 that a law was passed which gave a woman a right to go before a local magistrate, and if she said she went in fear of her life, the magistrate might grant separation. 236 International Council of Women. It was at the discretion of the magistrate to judge what was the cruelty that had been practiced. And I know magistrates, sometimes when they have seen that a woman has not been very much hurt, say they don't like to turn themselves into divorce courts, and they had better have another chance and try again. Now, I maintain that if a husband has attempted to push his wife down-stairs, or to gouge her eyes out, or to kick her, she should be separated from him, and not have to wait until she is maimed for life and then granted a separation. Then I would speak of the laws which regulate our streets. Our streets are free for men, but if a woman on our streets speaks to a man, a police near may come up and accuse her of having accosted that man. He may take her to the lock-up, and she must appear before a magistrate the next morn- ing. If a person offers me a box of matches or oranges in the street and I pass on, I don’t call that molestation. I don’t think with ordinary men, if a woman speaks to them only once, they would call that molestation, and they may pass on their way, never dreaming, perhaps, that this woman is taken up by a third person and brought into the law court. If any one per- sistently follows you and you turn around and say: “Now, you are molesting me, and if you do not cease I will put you in charge of the police,” that is right; but if I do give any one in charge, I ought to appear in the police court to accuse her ; and if any woman is taken up in our streets by a police- man, it ought to be by a man who is willing to appear against her as plaintiff and say that this woman has molested him. It is perfectly monstrous that we give to a person who has nothing whatever to do with it, the right of arresting and imprisoning a woman. If men were subject to the same indig- nity that women are, they wouldn’t bear it for one moment. They would say: “We will have the law directly changed.” I don’t know how the re- ligious women in England have let this law alone so long. Where is the use of uttering prayers and paying for worship, and preaching about this thing while you only benefit one person P I will echo with Mrs. Blake the wish that we should have women on our juries. Then, again, I must say that the bastardy laws of England are sim- ply a disgrace to our country. Brave will be the woman who interferes to alter those laws. It is, indeed, a cross, but it must be done. How, again, the religious women of England have allowed such things to be, I can not tell. Women, of course, have not the parliamentary franchise yet in England, but I do not choose to speak to-night about the voting power which they have, because that will be ably placed before you on Saturday night by one of our English delegates, whom I deem it an honor to call my friend, Mrs. Ashton Dilke. I want to say here, perhaps, what Mrs. Dilke would not like to say for herself—what sort of constituency it is that has sent her among you. It is the constituency of Newcastle-on-Tyne—a constituency renowned - Legal Conditions. 237 for its advanced thought and for its vigorous progressiveness and sound liberal- ism. Mrs. Dilke's husband had the honor to represent this constituency in the House of Commons, and these vigorous people have felt themselves honored in choosing Mrs. Dilke and very proud to send her over to America as their representative, and I must say that she is an able woman. I have some right to speak for the north of England, and wherever I have been I found that the men there honor Mr. Ashton Dilke, as do the women of the north the name of Mrs. Dilke, as well they may. And I, for one, deem my country most fortunate that it has secured so charming and able a representative to come over to America, to this great Council. When people tell you to leave politics alone, do not listen. A nation, or any section of a nation, that leaves politics alone is doomed. We must at- tend to politics, and we must not say that because we have not done so in the past that, therefore, we can not now. Let me give you that beautiful thought of your own great poet, James Russell Lowell, who is so well known in our English homes, and who gives inspiration to the hearts of many of us: “New Occasions teach new duties, Time makes ancient good uncouth ; They must upward be and onward Who would keep abreast of Truth. Lol her camp-fires gleam before us; We ourselves must Pilgrims be— Launch our Mayflower, And steer right boldly On the tempestuous, wintry Sea, Nor attempt the future's portals With the past's blood-rusted key.” Miss ANTHONy. I now present one who will talk to you of our native- born people, the Indians—Miss Alice C. Fletcher, whom you all know and love and want to hear. THE LEGAL CONDITIONS OF INDIAN WOMEN. Miss FLETCHER. The popular impression concerning Indian women is, that they are slaves, possessing neither place, property, nor respect in the tribe. This impression is confirmed by observing that women are the work- ers and the burden-carriers; that upon them falls all the drudgery of life. They are also said to be bought and sold as wives, and their life is without honor or happiness. In the face of this generally accepted picture of the Indian woman, I can hardly hope to greatly modify this opinion by the state- ment of facts. I must, therefore, ask you to receive what I say as from one who, having lived among the people, sharing their poverty in Summer and in winter, has thus learned their social and religious customs. The Indian tribe is not a mere collection of men and women ; it is a com- pletely organized body, girt about by laws, unwritten, it is true, but rooted in the religion and time-honored customs of the people. The tribe is divided into clans or gens, each division having its location in the camp, and duties in the tribe. These clans are organized and subdivided, having appropri- 238 International Council of Women. - ate officers to fulfill their rites and customs. These clans are based upon kinship, and are the fundamental units of the tribe. A man is born into his clan, into this family of kindred. In a large proportion of our Indian tribes the mother carries the clan—that is, the man belongs to the clan or kindred of his mother, not to that of his father. It is a general law among a large portion of the tribes that a man may not marry in his own clan. The family, as we understand it, can not exist in the tribe, as the husband and wife represent two distinct political bodies, so to speak, which can never coalesce, for neither the man nor the woman by marrying lose or change any of their rights in their respective clans. There are no family names in an Indian tribe. Of course, I do not refer to the customs which have been introduced by our race in many of the tribes, but to the native conditions unmodified by the white man, which conditions are to-day more or less potent in every Indian community. The man is given in his infancy one of the names belonging to his clan. These names are generally mythologic in their origin. He frequently takes other names later in life, marking his career, but he never forgets or loses his clan name. The woman is similarly named, and bears her birthright name to her grave. Her children, if the clan follows the mother, are given names proper to her clan, and are identified with her kindred and not with that of their father. The child is never the heir of both his parents, since the claim of the clan into which he is born is primal, and that of the family, as we know it, secondary. For the same reason the wife never becomes entirely under the con- trol of her husband. Her kindred have a prior right, and can use that right to separate her from him or to protect her from him, should he maltreat her. The brother who would not rally to the help of his sister would become a by-word among his clan. Not only will he protect her at the risk of his life from insult and injury, but he will seek help for her when she is sick and suffering. When I last saw the Sun Dance, one of the young men who went through all the tortures did it to redeem a vow he had made when his sister lay ill. At that time he went out of her lodge, and, lifting his hand to the sun, he promised that if she might recover he would tie his body to the tree and suffer for her. The woman never, from her birth to her death, is without the strong protecting arm of her kindred, to whom she can appeal in the case of injury. This is the general law. There are, however, circumstances in which a woman loses by her own act this right of appeal to her kindred, and there is in some tribes a strong Superstition concerning witchcraft, from the dread suspicion of which there is no more protection for the Indian accused, than there was for our own ancestors not many centuries ago. In marriage the woman, as a rule, is free to choose her husband if she so desires. Whether or no she is forced to marry a man against her will to gratify her family, depends upon the individual woman. Still, matches are made all the world over. The gifts made by the man to the family of his Legal Conditions. 239 wife are not a price paid for her, but the recognition of certain claims and demands upon him. The equivalent of these gifts is returned to the wife, within a few months after her marriage, by her father or near of kin. Cus- tom demands that the man should serve his father-in-law for a few years prior to setting up a separate establishment. Should the husband prove tyrannical or lazy in providing for his family, the wife tells him to go back to his kindred, or if the pair are living in a lodge apart from her family she takes down the lodge and departs, leaving her husband to watch the dying embers of the fire. Her kindred will not send her back, nor would her husband be allowed to coerce her to live with him. w It is true that Indian women are the laborers and burden-bearers. That is not because they are slaves, but because they belong to the non-combatant portion of society. All that part of any society which is not demanded for war is more or less engaged in labor. This is true among us, but the line is not drawn on sex. We set aside a class of men to defend us by arms, another class to defend us by laws, still another to execute the law, and so on ; the remainder are employed in the industries and arts of peace. These labors are shared by both sexes and do not belong to women alone, because our society has become co-ordinated. In the Indian tribe you see a much sim- pler form of society. No international courtesy or law holds tribes in peace or neutrality, and, until within a few years, every Indian village or camp was hourly in danger of war parties. The Indian man had to sleep on his arms, to be ready at any instant to defend his mother and sisters, his wife and children. This con- dition of affairs made it impossible for the Indian to become a laborer, and to this was added the necessity of hunting to procure meat and clothing. The Indian man was the sole provider and protector, and the Indian woman the conservor, of the home. He must ride free that he may strike the needed game or the dreaded enemy. He could not be hampered by the £mpedimenta of family bundles and burdens. Since all men were needed to protect all women and children, to the women fell the ax, the hoe, and the burden-strap, and, as a logical consequence, all the property belonged to the WOmen. In olden times the women claimed the land. In the early treaties and negotiations for the sale of land, the women had their voice, and the famous Chief Cornplanter was obliged to retract one of his bargains because the women forbade, they being the land-holders, and not the men. With the century, our custom of ignoring women in public transactions has had its reflex influence upon Indian custom. At the present time all property is per- sonal; the man owns his own ponies and other belongings which he has per- sonally acquired; the woman owns her horses, dogs, and all the lodge equip- ments ; children own their own articles, and parents do not control the possessions of their children. There is really no family property, as we use - 240 - International Council of Women. the term. A wife is as independent in the use of her possessions as is the most independent man in our midst. If she chooses to give away or sell all of her property, there is no one to gainsay her. When I was living with the Indians, my hostess, a fine looking woman, who wore numberless bracelets, and rings in her ears and on her fingers, and painted her face like a brilliant sunset, one day gave away a very fine horse. I was surprised, for I knew there had been no family talk on the subject, so I asked : “Will your husband like to have you give the horse away ?” Her eyes danced, and, breaking into a peal of laughter, she hastened to tell the story to the other women gathered in the tent, and I became the target of many merry eyes. I tried to explain how a white woman would act, but laughter and contempt met my explanation of the white man’s hold upon his wife's property. - It has been my task to explain to the Indian woman her legal conditions under the law. In bringing our legal lines down upon her independent life I have been led to realize how much woman has given of her own freedom to make the strong foundation of the family and to preserve the accumula- tion and descent of property. All this was necessary, that the pressure of want should be removed, time for mental culture secured, and the develop- ment of civilization made possible to the race—a sacrifice needful, but nevertheless a sacrifice. As I have tried to explain our statutes to Indian women, I have met with but one response. They have said: “As an In- dian woman I was free. I owned my home, my person, the work of my own hands, and my children could never forget me. I was better as an Indian woman than under white law.” Men have said: “Your laws show how little your men care for their women. The wife is nothing of herself. She is worth little but to help a man to have one hundred and sixty acres.” One day, sitting in the tent of an old chief, famous in war, he said to me: “My young men are to lay aside their weapons; they are to take up the work of the women; they will plow the field and raise the crops; for them I see a future, but my women, they to whom we owe everything, what is there for them to do? I see riothing ! You are a woman; have pity on my women when everything is taken from them.” Not only does the woman under our laws lose her independent hold on her property and herself, but there are offenses and injuries which can befall a woman which would be avenged and punished by the relatives under tribal law, but which have no penalty or recognition under our laws. If the Indian brother should, as of old, defend his sister, he would himself become liable to the law and suffer for his cham- pionship. I have been considering strictly the legal conditions of Indian women under tribal and under our own laws. I have not touched upon customs which bear heavily upon them. Many of these customs can not be reached by the law. Their amelioration must depend upon other influences which Legal Conditions. - 241 it is the function of Christian philanthropy to exercise. I would have you, my friends and sisters, take pity on the Indian woman. Her old- time individual independence is gone. She has fallen under the edge of our laws—an edge few of us have ever felt. We do not live under the letter of the law, but in the midst of a growing, broadening Christian spirit that is each year making its mark upon our statute-books and empha- sizing the right of every human being to life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap- piness. Meanwhile our Indian sisters are called to enter our civilization, and for them the path is full of difficulty and hardship. They must lose much they hold dear and suffer wrongs at the hands of those whose added legal powers, when untempered by an unselfish, cultured spirit, makes the legal conditions of woman akin to the cruelest slavery. I crave for my Indian sisters, your help, your patience, and your unfailing labors, to hasten the day when the laws of all the land shall know neither male nor female, but grant to all equal rights and equal justice. Miss ANTHON.Y. Now, friends, we have had at the Riggs House during the last week one of the race about which Miss Fletcher has been talking— an Indian—Princess Viroqua. She is here on the platform, and, since we are representatives of all nationalties and all people, I want her to step for- ward and let you look at a native-born Indian. Princess VIROQUA. Madam president, ladies, and gentlemen: I am truly glad to be allowed to stand on this platform with these great ladies, of whom I have read as long ago as I can remember. Miss ANTHoNY. The next speech will be from Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage. Dr. Ruth M. Wood, who is on the programme to-night, will be heard to- morrow morning, and as she has had a large experience in her profession, she will be able to tell us much on the question of social purity. Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage followed in an able speech on “Law in the Family,” which is omitted, at her request, as she desired all the space allowed her to be reserved for what she said in the Religious Symposium. In her judgment that phase of the question, at this stage in woman’s development, is more important for consideration than the legal or political. Miss ANTHONY. It is with great satisfaction I now present to you a woman who was a very rebellious student in Oberlin College. In the early days of that venerable institution, girls were not allowed to read their own orations, that service being invariably performed by one of the “superior sex.” This rule was very exasperating to the girls of the graduating class, and the one about to address you put her foot down, that if she were not permitted to deliver her own oration no man should. She is here to-day—a delegate from the American Woman Suffrage Association, Mrs. Lucy Stone. Mrs. STONE. All the addresses of the evening, except Miss Fletcher's 242 International Council of Women. about the Indians, have been devoted to showing how unequal everywhere are the conditions of women as compared with those of men. If that idea can only be made to take a firm lodgment in people's minds, this evening's meeting should lead to many vital changes. Yesterday a little item cut from a newspaper, with a pencilled note, was handed to me, asking what it meant. The newspaper slip said, in substance, that in Massachusetts, where women have the right to vote for school committee, out of so many thousands of them who are old enough to vote, and might vote if they chose, only about three thousand voted. The note asked how this could be explained. I should like to ask the reporters to pay attention to this, because there have been so many misrepresentations about the school vote of women in Massachusetts. Our Secretary of State, Mr. Pierce, has made an official report year after year, and there have been very serious mistakes in it. His report is based upon the reports made to him by the town clerks as to the number of women voting in each town. In 1885, the town clerk of Milford, in Worcester County, published a certified statement, giving the number of women who had registered and voted in Milford during the three years preced- ing. According to this certified statement, nearly five times as many women had voted in Milford alone as were declared by Secretary Pierce's report to have voted in the whole county. On investigation, it was found that every year, for three years, the number of women voting in the city of Worcester had been set down in the official report as the number voting in the county of Worcester. After this, the church in Secretary Pierce's town gave a sociable, and it was announced that the gentlemen would cook the supper, and that Secretary Pierce would contribute a pie. Some sarcastic person said that if his pie were as badly cooked as his figures, it would not be a very good pie. I do not suppose there was any intention to misrepresent, but a serious mistake of that kind, repeated for three years running, certainly shows carelessness somewhere. / - I think that deep down in the heart of every man there is a sense of loy- alty to woman. They do not want to hurt us nor to do us an injustice ; but they do not think. They were born under the old common law and edu- cated by it. When the child was born, and the question was asked whose child it was, the old common law said it was the father's child; and when it came to marriage, the law gave the property of the wife to the husband. The laws have been changed ; they have been made better, infinitely better, but we have had a great deal of trouble in getting the changes made. I remem- ber how many years we asked that married women might have a right to their own clothes. It took us eleven years to get that law changed. Then we asked that widows might have a right to be buried in the family lot ; and how many years it took us to get that But we got it. And so on, one thing after another has been gained ; but I hope no man will please himself by thinking we have now got all we want. Legal Conditions. 243 I remember a little incident which illustrates very well the position of women in the family under the law. I was driving into Boston one day in the early gray of the morning, and about two miles from the city a little street gamin ran up and asked for a ride. My heart always warms to children, and I said, “Yes.” He climbed in, and I said, “Where are you going so early in the morning?” He said, “I build the fire every morning in a store on Devonshire street, and I have to go early, but I'most always get a ride. I ask them, and somebody 'most always takes me up.” Pretty soon he began to tell me all about his family. He said: “My mother gets up early, and builds the fire and gets my breakfast, and gets me up and sends me off. Then she gets my father's breakfast, and gets him up and sends him off. Then she gets the breakfast for my little brothers and sisters, and sends them off to school, and then when they have gone she and the baby have their breakfast.” I said, “How many are there of you?” He said, “There are ten children of us;” and he added proudly, “The baby can walk as well as I can.” I said, “How much pay do you get for going into the city so early and making this fire P’’ ‘‘I get $2 a week.” “How much does your father get? “He gets $2 a day.” “And how much does your mother get P” The little fellow looked bewildered as he turned his childish eyes up to my face and said, “Why, she don’t work for anybody.” “Why,” said I, “I thought you said she worked for all of you.’’ ‘‘Oh, yes, for us, she does,” he said, “but there ain’t no money into it.” That little boy told the case as it is. Into that family he brought his $2 a week, and the father brought his $12 a week, and doubtless they made the best of it they could, and shared their poverty together ; and so it often is among those who are richer, they share what they have and do the best they can. Yet, after all, the woman stands, whether she is the wife of a rich man or a poor man, in the same place. For her, there is “no money in it.” The law can take no measure of those finer compensations that are not counted by gold, but here the law Counts the woman as earning nothing and having nothing of her own. Mothers of families are classed in the census among “non-producers.” Every man thinks he supports his wife, and very likely that man whose wife got the boy his breakfast and the father his breakfast, and took care of them all, thought he supported her. Perhaps he thought she did her part well and was grateful to her. But what we want is to root out of the world the idea that the part the woman contributes to the family is not as valuable as the man's part. If a man has sheep or cattle on a ranch, he pays a man what it is worth to take care of them. But when the mother watches over the children her labor is reckoned as having no value. I well remember how my mother took care of us children, perhaps in twenty years not having a night of sound sleep ; how well I remember her hand stretched out to me in the trundle-bed to see if I was sleeping, and how well I remember her going 244 International Council of Women. in the night into another room to see if all was right with the children there ! Through all those years, how she watched over us in sickness and in health, caring for our food and clothes, our morals and our manners . When a woman engages in this high service it ought not to be for her a poverty- stricken condition. It ought to make her the sharer of the income and of the property interest, that she may be really a queen in her home and the equal of her husband. Women have no right to trial by a jury of their peers; we may be impris- oned, fined, or hanged, and we have no power to say anything about it. A little girl from her cradle up to womanhood, whether it is a dollar she has earned and wishes to spend, or a deed she wishes to make, finds everything settled for her by the law, without her having any voice in it, as if she were an idiot. There is not a man living who would be willing to be in such a position under the law as a woman is in ; he would be stricken with horror to think of being in a place where all his interests were settled for him by some one else. Oh, men; noble, generous men there is not one of you who should not try to make a public sentiment which shall change these laws, and make them as just to women as they are to you. To-day, when your daughter marries, and you send her out from your home, your blessing going with her, you hope her husband will be kind and noble ; yet remember that if he is kind to her, the law is not. In Massachusetts, and most of the other States, how many days do you think a widow may stay after her husband's death in his house, the home where her children were born and reared P. The law says she may stay in that house forty days without paying rent. Think of that What man would like his daughter to come to that? In Maine, the legislature, at its last session, meaning to be kind to women, changed the number of days to ninety, instead of forty. I heard a young man say before the Woman Suffrage Committee of the Massachusetts legislature, “I don't want my wife to be told she may stay in our house just so many days after I am dead. While I am here, my strong arm , helps to bring my wife what she needs. When I am dead, and can not bring her anything, I do not want the law to pluck at her and leave her only forty days to stay in the home where I have taken care of her for years.” There are many noble men who would say the same. My grief is that they do not try to make the laws better for their daughters and their wives. Each class must look out for itself in these matters, and then they will be looked after. Mrs. Poyser said, “Women are foolish ; God almighty made them to match the men.” Suppose women are foolish. There never yet was a woman so foolish that, when the law said she had no right to her chil- dren, the mother, though she might be as timid as a bird, would not have tried in the best way she could, to assert her right to her children. I beg for women the full right of citizenship, with the absolute certainty that it will be safe for women to excercise that right. God made the law Legal Conditions. 245 that binds the mother to her child by ties that nothing can obliterate. I have seen a woman who had been half a century a maniac, and during all those years had not seen her children, and when, after fifty years, they came back to her, not the children who left her, but gray-haired men, she looked at them, utterly unrecognizing them ; but, when one of them bent down and took her hand in his and called her mother, that woman, a maniac for half a century, gathered the hand to her lips and then to her heart, while she strug- gled to gather up the scattered threads of memory. All those years of insanity could not destroy the maternal instinct utterly; God took care of that. Whoever turns his heart against a man, it is not his mother. He may commit crime, defy human laws; he may be so bad a man that his wife fears him and his children flee from him, and the law may be searching for him, but if he comes to the old hearthstone where his mother sits—she is where she used to sit, waiting for him—and if he comes home to her stained with crime she is still his mother, and she opens her arms wide and says: “Poor fellow, by so much the more as everybody else shuts you out, by so much the more will I take you in.” And so she does, and so do all the other mothers; and it is because this eternal law binds the mother and the child. And whenever a question comes up as to whether there shall be houses of prostitution, or gambling saloons or drinking places, the first question the mother asks is, “Will it make the town a safe place for my sons and daughters?” She thinks what will be safe for them will be safe for her. God never made a mother yet who didn’t a hundred times think what would be good for her children before she thought once of what would be good for herself. Mothers must always be the conservative forces of the world by the very fact that they are mothers. Oh, men, help them into power that they may aid in making the laws, and let us all try together as mutual helpers in this matter. Miss ANTHONY. Remember, friends, to-morrow afternoon Mrs. Cleve- land gives us a reception at the White House. The delegates to the Coun- cil, invited speakers, and officers of the Association will report at the Riggs House at half-past three, that we may go in a body to pay our respects to the wife of the President. The Council is now adjourned until 10 o'clock to-morrow morning. FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 1888. MORNING SESSION.—FOR WOMEN ALONE S O C I A L P U R IT Y. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Vice-President of the National Woman Suffrage Association for Illinois, presiding. Invoca- tion by Martha McClellan Brown. After the singing of the hymn, “ Nearer, my God, to Thee,” Mrs. Harbert made the opening address. A NEW CRUSADE. Mrs. HARBERT. Amid the harmony of this historic week let us hope the discordant note, “America for Americans,” has been forever lost; while, in lieu thereof, the daughters of many lands take up the thrilling chorus of our illustrious forefathers, “America for the oppressed ; ” while we would also breathe the benediction of our beloved Lucretia Mott, “Truth for authority, not authority for truth.” Dearly beloved delegates from the Mother Country and the Old World, you are welcome home to this country made for you and for us by the patriots of the world. Surely the daughters of India, France, England, Ire- land, Denmark, Finland, and Norway have chartered rights in a republic where equality is made possible by the lofty principles of our patriotic fathers. Truly, “the place whereon we standis holy ground,” and if any one moment can be supreme, when each is divine, to such a moment have we come, and I am confident that could our united thoughts be voiced as we approach the discussion of this momentous question—social purity—it would be a strong desire that we might so radiate the light of truth that we could “speak to the people, and they would move forward.” We are here in search of foundation principles on which to lay the corner-stone of a new civilization ; to aid in establishing a government of the people; to make over the bach- eloric apartments of state into a national home, where there shall be responsi- bility and opportunity for mothers; hence, greater comfort for fathers, and, as a result of joint parental endeavor, protection and equal rights for the children. While men continue to hold the mental, moral, and spiritual powers of woman as unworthy of equal recognition with their own, in church and state, they and their sons will lightly esteem her happiness and honor. Do my words seem harsh P I would that they were untrue. But turn to the laws and compare the punishment meted out to betrayer and betrayed, and tell me if I speak untruly. We may flood the world with petitions and Social Purity. 247 - pledges, burden the air with sighs and tears, but woman will not become a true helpmeet for man until she is everywhere recognized, and motherhood and fatherhood held equally sacred. Woman can never give birth to the highest type of children until she is free to develop her own powers. We all love and honor womanly women as we do manly men, but we have never yet known a truly womanly woman—a woman perfectly free to develop her own powers; never have known a woman whose education, conscience, and creed have not been influenced by laws made by men; and, since the univer- sal testimony of our brothers is that “woman is a conundrum ”—an enigma, an unknowable being—is it not fair to conclude that in legislating for this enigmatical being our fathers have sometimes blundered P Woman, remanded to the harem, nursery, or kitchen, denied opportunity and relieved from responsibility, has become the victim of a narrow love for toys, trinkets, and jewels, and thereby of her own and of man's passions. The brave and true spirits, masculine and feminine, see and know that the enfranchisement of woman means a moral uplifting for the race. The rec- ognition of the divinity of humanity indicates our work; not revolution or the slow process of evolution, but prompt, loving amelioration of the condi- tion of the children is the watch-word of our new crusade. Said our honored and beloved champion, Wendell Phillips: “When all England was at fault and wandering in the desert of a false philosophy concerning the West India question and African slavery, Elizabeth Herrick, with the true insight of a spiritual woman, wrote out the simple proposition, ‘immediate, uncondi- tional emancipation,’ which solved the problem and gave freedom to a race.” So, to-day, in order to solve the questions of labor and capital, temperance and social evil, we demand the enfranchisement of woman and immediate attention to the condition of children. - How will this solve the problem P Think of it. The children of this generation will be the sovereign people of the next. If the children of to- day are unprotected, untrained, unskilled, ignorant of the principles of the equal rights of humanity, then will the Sovereign people of the next generation be dissolute, selfish, ignorant, and their legislation unjust ; but with all the children gathered into industrial homes and schools, taught the divine phil- osophy of the Golden Rule, and that law is only majestic in proportion to the truth upon which it is based, a new civilization will dawn. Think what it would mean to the State of Pennsylvania if the thousands of children referred to yesterday, could be released from factories and mines. Let it be our high privilege to sound clearly and distinctly the clarion note of the new crusade—the crusade of the mothers in behalf of the neglected children. Thousands of little children would be released from their imprisonment in stores and factories, where the present system of fines and overseership has reduced them almost to slavery. Their work could be done by older persons far more able to enter the arena of industrial warfare. Think of it, in one of 248 International Council of Women. our cities, by an actual house-to-house visitation we discovered, that only one child in four is receiving any education. With these children, the future sov- ereigns of the state, gathered into industrial schools and homes, could not the fathers and mothers decree that, in order to protect them from being tempted or debauched in childhood, no liquor saloon or house of ill-repute should be allowed near these sacred precincts? What more sacred shrines could hal- low a country than schools for the children P + 4 + It is now my pleasure to welcome, on behalf of the Council, the Vice- President of the National Woman Suffrage Association for Tennessee, Elizabeth Lisle Saxon. “THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE.’’ Mrs. SAXON. A ship was seen sailing in the Southern Atlantic and making signals of distress. Another vessel bore down upon her, and the captain called out: “What is the matter P” “We are out of water; we are dying of thirst,” was the reply. “Dip it up ; you are in the mouth of the Amazon River,” shouted the commander. These men were perish- ing of thirst, ignorant that the boundless, fresh water was all about them. The organized womanhood of the world is in the great expanse of boundless freedom in thought and act, if they choose to open their eyes and avail themselves of it, they will find around them a sympathizing and helpful body of men and women, hungry for the life-giving truth as they are for freedom from sin and crime. Experiences of a life spent in active work for my own sex, convince me that the greatest bar to human improvement lies in the false educa- tion and the cramped nature of woman ; in the shams and shame that have enveloped sexual life. Born in the midst of slavery, reared to woman- hood surrounded by its influences, I hated it because of the conditions in which it placed woman. I saw men made all the laws that controlled the des- tiny of women and the entire life of the colored race of both sexes, and established, by their action and approval, customs that rendeled it impossible for questions touching upon sexual matters in their far-reaching influence to be discussed by women, and that everywhere only the most superficial and perverted views were held by men, and shame in all concerning them by WOIſle1). I saw that white men despised an unchaste woman, but mingled freely with corrupt men, while negro men seemed to be, by some law, indifferent to unchastity in woman, and they often acted as procurers for white men of untainted young girls of their own race ; and slavery was the cause. I saw that where slavery did not prevail the ranks of this most awful class had to be kept filled with white women, drawn from all ranks, and never allowed to return to respectable life again. Time taught me that slavery had caused this indifference in negro men ; their changed condition has con- vinced me of its truth by seeing that the negro man has imitated the white, and, by education and freedom, a radical change in woman's views will be wrought, and she, too, will learn to demand a higher morality from man. Social Purity. 249 I saw, as a student, that the Bible allowed both slavery and concu- binage, and from pulpits in the North I heard slavery defended and the Bible quoted to prove it God-ordained ; and every opponent of woman’s education and advancement was drawing his ready arguments from this sacred book. I turned in passionate despair to my father for an explanation. This was his reply: “Only through her own effort and struggles can woman be free, or her conditions be changed ; strive to understand these evils, and fearlessly denounce them—the truth alone can make you free.” I literally lived in Bible pages; while one page enchanted me, another was to me almost mad- dening. I saw that in Christ woman had an unfailing friend ; but, amid the wild combat of argument and censure, I saw well-nigh every weapon to hold us in bondage men claimed to find within these pages. Well-nigh all women were against me, and all men condemned my views, showing me with tri- umphant scorn that the curse of the race was brought by woman. Pity, but do not blame me, when I say I at last spurned it from me, crying it is a bar, a curse, a hindrance to the race. Like Paul of old, I can never tell how it came to me, but there did come to me an overwhelming expe- rience that carried me, like a whirlwind, to the very foot of the cross. I had been honest, I had sought light with weepings and groanings uncounted, and I turned to my Bible with renewed zeal, as though the scales had fallen from my eyes, and it glowed with the light of the dayspring from on high. No infidel power had shaken it, and though to science it had yielded its days for periods and that the Sun stood still, yet in its spiritual clearness, light and beauty shone where cruel dogma alone had been seen, and now in the light of contemporaneous history, the most scoffing skeptic sees its spiritual mean- ing, and can understand why it holds its place, rooted in human affection. Man’s spirit is mightier than all else, for it is of God. Thought is more powerful than horsemen or chariots, its victories mightier than those won by the tramp of armed hosts, the booming of cannon or shedding of blood. The Biblical record opens with the expressed statement: “In the begin. ning God created man ; male and female created he them and gave them dominion over the earth, to rule over it, subdue it, increase and multiply, and replenish the earth.” In the fifth chapter the genealogies of the Adamic race are given : “In the beginning God created man ; male and female created he them, and called their name Adam.” The Bible is an Eastern book, written under Eastern inspirations. Moses and Christ were Eastern men; the latter never spoke save in parables. Between the first and the fifth chapters, comes the story of the Adamic fall from a state of innocence of one man and one woman, evidently giving the spiritual meaning of the fall of the human race. In a history embracing over two thousand years the Bible makes no reference to this story of the garden and its consequences, and since the coming of Christ for two thousand years we have preached Christ 17 250 International Council of Women. and practiced Moses, in all our dealings with woman—stoning her to death and letting the man go free. Reviewing this story of the fall, Christ declares he came to restore all things, to verify the Scriptures. He demanded the same recognition of sin in man as in woman, the same moral law, preached the first sermon for woman's equality before the law. If this be taken away as non-scriptural, we are left the words, “Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her in his heart, hath committed adultery with her already.” Paul and all of the apostles echoed this sentiment of Christ, demanding “continence, chastity, and spiritual truth and life.” - In the masculine interpretation of the Bible woman has been largely ig- nored ; or, as in this Edenic story, she has been used to bar the path to human progress. The hour has come. If in this chapter lies her curse, out of it, also, comes her blessing and her reward. Woman must now realize that in her giving truth on these lines alone can the race be redeemed, and Christ's rule of love begin on earth, and his coming be made a verity. Only realize what we have been under those conditions of false modesty and ignorance of the divine law of life and all its possibilities. The Garden of Eden can only be represented showing the face of the race under the dominion of lust, using the vital functions of life as a means of dragging down all spirituality. What is the most subtle of the beasts of the field that tempted woman? What is more subtile than desire? What thing ever crawled upon its belly and ate dust; could eat no spiritual food all the days of its life, but lust? “I will put enmity between thy seed and her seed. It shall bruise thy head, but thou shalt bruise his heel.’’ Has not his heel, his physical body, been bruised by this serpent in the taint that is shown in scrofula, cancer, consumption, and every hideous disease from thousands of centuries of unbridled transmissions of syphilitic poisons? Has not the promise rolled down the ages to woman, that her seed should bruise the serpent's head P Will not the holy sacrifice, the holy teachings, all the lifting up of woman's promised seed, the Christ, and the preached word, show the promise has been kept, and the demand still holds a crucifixion of man's lower nature ? Paul, following Jesus, teaches: “ They are Christ's who crucify the affections with the lusts.” The donning of fig-leaf aprons was plainly man's inner and purer spiritual nature, shrinking and cowering, ashamed before the brutalization of his higher faculties—the divine powers of procreation perverted to unbridled license. We weep with Paul when he, in his spiritual warfare, fights “this thorn in his flesh,” and in his buffetings of Satan, triumphs in the strength of Christ over his own lower nature. We have sowed the wind in ignorance ; we are reaping the whirlwind in divorces, rape, murder, entailed upon children conceived in lust and gestated with its poison in every vein. I lay no sacrilegious hands on the truths of - Social Purity. 251 Holy Writ. I sweep back the curtain that the light of divine love may enter my own soul, and gladly would I lay down life to make a firm path for younger women. I could not die, so I lived for women. Then I boldly lay the ax at the root of the upas tree of crime. I implore you women, old and young, to look back on your own ignorance of all this law of human needs and realize what is around us and what fruit secrecy has borne. Gather to your very souls the children in loving confidence. Show both sons and daughters the sanctities and the terrors of this awful power of sex, its capacities to bless or curse its owner and the little helpless being in the mother's womb. Teach that the building of character begins in the very hour of conception ; that he or she who can give the color of hair, gait, laughter, and looks, can bequeath the tainted appetites and low diseases. Teach that the holy thought, the reverent prayer, the dwelling in the king- dom of peace, belongs of right to the mother builder. The self-sacrifice, the loving sympathy, the mighty upholding of all her nature in this, her divine mission, that is the father's duty. Nature furnishes every mother a beautiful lesson for her children. Why forever cram with book-lore to the exclusion of tender counsel on lofty possibilities P Mothers say, “I can’t tell my children these things.” Then some boy or girl will. Your Bible will betray you. Every child knows that the hen lays her eggs. His nature and his innocence sees no harm in this. Tell him, as you show him the tiny life-germ in the egg as you prepare your food, that here is the unfolded story of creation ; show him that in just such shaped and softly-lined rooms all animal life cradles in the mother's body, from its lowly form up to man walking in God's image on earth. Here every nerve and bone and muscle of the wonderful house God’s spirit dwells in is created—wrought from her life-blood. He is bone of her bone, life of her life ; woven into being, with every gift of her body and soul consecrated to his service with her daily and hourly prayer, sent into life with the pangs of agony that bid her stand in the very shadow of death's wing that she may cradle him in her arms, and make for long months, her bosom the cup of his life, the couch of his rest, his refuge in sorrow, his pillow in death. I have spoken for twelve years to men alone and to women alone, and to men and women together. I have spoken to an audience as large as this of men, and I the only woman in the room, and have spoken as freely as I have spoken here. The men, instead of going to the door when I was through, stormed the platform, and, with tears running down their faces, said, “Thank God, that woman has at last realized that we are agonizing as she agonizes.” I ask that women who can consecrate themselves to this work will speak to men everywhere. Oh, my friends, I implore you not to go out of this house and say they talked shameful things. I tell you that “ the truth shall make you free.” From all parts of Kansas I am receiving letters to come back and speak on this question. I received one this 252 International Council of Women. morning to go and speak to a teacher's institute with over five hundred stu- dents, saying that it was this imperative question that was needed. Then I beg you throw aside the garments of shame, stand erect in the God-born majesty of true womanhood, and dare to be free to work out the whole great good. Mrs. HARPERT. Surely we can pay no higher compliment to Mrs. Anna Rice Powell than to state that she is the delegate from the New York Com- mittee for the Prevention of State Regulation of Vice, and associate editor of the Philanthropist, published in New York, which does most valiant serv- ice for social purity. THE INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION FOR THE ABOLITION OF STATE REGULA- TION OF VICE. Mrs. Powell. It has been said that the history of prostitution is the his- tory of woman. From the days of barbarism fo the present time, whether held as a slave or a toy, she has been its pitiful victim. It has been assumed that there must be a certain portion of women set apart for that lowest form of subjection—the service of sensuality. Writers like Lecky have recorded it in cold type that the virtue of the favored woman is safe only at the expense of a pariah class—a fearful sacrifice, indeed. The assumption is an insult to manhood in its best estate. As a result of this base doctrine of the necessity of social vice have come the efforts to license it, with police and medical supervision, in the vain at- tempt to escape its own penalty. In Continental Europe legalized immo- rality has existed for many years, and the degrading slavery it imposes upon victimized women has been little understood by the favored classes. It is a failure in a sanitary point of view, as might have been expected, and its re- Sults morally are most deplorable, as the condition of the countries where it exists shows. How could it be otherwise, since it does not assume to check the sin of licentiousness itself, only to provide for men a safe indulgence in it P In 1866–69, this system was introduced into Great Britain by act of Par- liament, ostensibly to protect the health of the army in certain military dis- tricts. It was disguised under the name of the Contagious Diseases Acts, and few comprehended the true character of the measure till it was exposed. To a group of noble men and women belongs the honor of making the vig- orous resistance to it which culminated, in 1886, in its repeal. But it fell to the lot of Mrs. Josephine E. Butler, the wife of a clergyman of the Church of England, to be the chosen leader in this historic movement. A baptism of sorrow had prepared her in a special manner for the needed consecration of spirit, and an experience in rescue-work among sinning women enabled her to feel keenly the deeper degradation to which it doomed them. In the name of outraged womanhood she proclaimed a rebellion. It was hard enough already for these outcasts to regain the lost path of virtue, since Social Purity. 253 society never forgives in women what it so readily condones in men; but once registered as professional prostitutes and subjected to the indignity of the enforced surgical examination, to which, under the arbitrary police power granted, even innocent girls, on mere suspicion, might, and often did, become victims, their reformation was well-nigh hopeless. The penal- ties imposed were not for the sin itself, but for failure to comply with certain police regulations designed to protect and localize it. If pronounced free from disease they were given a government permit to ply their unholy trade and tempt men to share it by an assumed sanitary safety. The only argument any virtuous person can offer in favor of the system is the assumed protection from the contagion of disease. , Many good people have been honestly led to encourage it here as abroad, in the delusive hope that thus the suffering brought upon innocent wives and children by the transgressions of guilty husbands and fathers might be averted. It would seem very illogical to expect to escape the results of this sin by any treat- ment of it so superficial; but in the long ago, before the woman M. D. had been evolved, there had crept into medical literature recommenda- tions of this kind, and so professional authority was claimed for it. It is an evidence that it is not good for man to be alone in the medical profes- sion. - In this new era women as physicians have been a mighty power in help- ing to show what is involved in such a system, for the honor of motherhood and the sanctuary of the home. It needs to be studied from the standpoint of both men and women, with a goodly faith in the possibilities of virtue. To the many noble men in the profession who so believe, some of whom rallied to Mrs. Butler's support and helped to emphasize the fact that what is morally wrong can never be physiologically right, the women of all lands should give due honor. A direct moral appeal to the hearts of the people would have met with a prompt response, but as the way was blocked by the sophistries of law and medicine, the task imposed was arduous. Then there was great difficulty in treating so delicate a question with the publicity that was needed. It cost much for refined, cultivated women to meet the criticisms invoked against them. Hitherto it had been thought that favored women should not know of this great evil in the world. Men might know, must know, but it was for the convenience of those who wished to lead a dual life that it be well concealed from the general knowledge of good women. - Undaunted by abuse, misrepresentation, and even threats against life itself, Mrs. Butler and her allies went steadily on in their work. Her labors hitherto had been private, but now she became a voice for the voiceless, and from that time to the present hour she has borne this cross—“ despising the shame of having to speak of shame ''-that she might plead for justice for all women, irrespective of condition, and proclaim an equal code of morals for 254 International Council of Women. both sexes. Never before in the world’s history had the system of pros- titution been thus aggressively assailed. It seemed to the worldly wise but a futile protest from a frail woman, yet we are beginning to see what our own Mrs. Howe has chronicled with the poet’s touch that, as an instrument in the divine hand, “she has altered the course of the world’’ and set its cur- rents toward purity. The conflict was not alone with the advocates of this evil system of a drilled harlotry in England, but a powerful Continental organization was intent upon extending it over the whole world. Mrs. Butler went to the Continent to raise a “cry of conscience ’’ there. It was, indeed, a “Voice in the Wilderness,” as she called the pamphlet in which she set forth her appeal. Would that all who are still ignorant of what licensed prosti- tution is in those countries where it has so long prevailed, might read for themselves what she has recorded of her Continental experiences in her book, “The New Abolitionists.” It is a cruel slavery for victimized women where the system is established, and well did she choose her title. The recruiting traffic in young girls, which is one of the saddest phases of this infamous business, is fitly characterized as the “White Slave Trade.” As a result of this mission of Mrs. Butler to the Continent, came “ The International Federation for the Abolition of State Regulation of Vice.” This organization, composed of men and women, is non-sectarian in religion, non-partisan in politics. Its president is M. de Laveleye, the distinguished writer on political economy, of Liege, Belgium ; its secretaries are Mrs. Butler and Professor Stuart, M. P. It holds a conference annually in some one of the fifteen countries represented in its membership ; and every three years a congress is convened for a week's deliberation upon the hygienic, moral, legislative, and other aspects of the problem involved. It has been my privilege to attend, as an American delegate, two of these congresses, and to listen to the reports of the work set forth. We think we have much to do here in America to establish equal rights for women in all the relations of life, but in contrast with the conditions in Continental Europe our task seems light indeed. They have not the van- tage-ground of years of agitation for enlarged opportunities for women which the devoted pioneers that we delight to honor in this Council have given us. The obstacles they have to contend with might appal less coura- geous hearts. I bespeak for them the sympathetic interest of all American women in their arduous struggle to defend the rights of the poor and victim- ized of their own sex, and to elevate the tone of public morals. And I should mention also the loyal men who, like Professor Humbert, of Switzer- land, and others, have consecrated themselves to the cause. Self-interest should prompt us to lend our aid. So many Americans in- dulge in these days in foreign travel, that the customs of the Old World are in danger of being ingrafted upon the new. Many young men take their Social Purity. - 255 first lesson in social vice in Paris and other Continental cities, under the delu- sion that the regulated, licensed brothel gives security from disease, and a fatal fallacy has it proved. The unfortunate confusion of tongues, which prevents the literature of those countries being easily accessible here, is a great obstacle in the way of our active co-operation with them. If the Au//e/in Com/imenſa/, the official organ of the Federation, were printed in English instead of French, the knowledge of its good work could be more easily extended. The British branches of the Federation have done much by the circulation of literature to spread the needed light upon their cause. Just at present they are working zealously to expose the condition of affairs in their Crown colonies. Though Great Britain has gained a repeal of the acts applying to certain of its own military districts, it has a heavy responsibility to bear for fostering impurity and legalized lust in its colonies. What must the natives of heathen countries think of the representatives of a nation called Christian, who provide prostitutes for their army as they would food and rai- ment Alfred S. Dyer, editor of the Senſineſ, of London, is making a tour of investigation in India, and the reports he gives of the conditions there are most revolting. They make one wish there were a thousand Ramabais instead of one, to open pathways of independence for the women of India, and save them from the despoiler. We are indebted to this International Federation for sending, in 1876, a deputation to America, to warn us against the schemes of Regulationists here. These delegates were the Rev. J. P. Gledstone, and the Hon. Henry J. Wilson, now a member of Parliament. They held conferences in several of our large cities, and in New York a branch committee was organized, of which Mrs. Abby Hopper Gibbons is president, whose active services have been needed the past twelve years, to watch and thwart the persistent efforts that have been made to secure legalized vice in that city and elsewhere. This committee has distributed a large amount of social purity literature, not only of its own, but many of the special publications of the Federation. Preceding the date of this deputation from England, licensed prostitution was tried in the city of St. Louis for a period of about four years–1870–74. The late Dr. William G. Eliot, and a band of brave women and good men, led a vigorous agitation of resistance to it, and were finally victorious. Dr. Eliot has left on record in a valuable pamphlet, the history of that experiment, showing that while it lasted disease was not lessened and that immorality increased. Kindred unsuccessful attempts were made thus early to introduce the odious, system in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cin- cinnati, Washington, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco. But there chanced to be those who, watchful of all laws bearing unequally upon women, and mindful of the menace to public morals, were prompt to Sound an alarm. It is fitting in this Council to record the tribute of thanks due 256 International Council of Women. for the services rendered in these localities, by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lydia Mott, Anna Dickinson, Dr. Caroline B. Winslow, Dr. Susan A. Edson, Phoebe W. Couzins, Virginia L. Minor, and others in that earlier time. Though social vice is not openly licensed in this country, there are those who believe in the system, and we have shameful conditions of immorality which should be cause for grave concern. Our only safeguard is in dealing with them radically, insisting upon an equal standard of virtue for both sexes; and to this end does the ultimate influence of “The International Federa- tion for the Abolition of State Regulation of Vice ’’ tend. In England, an outgrowth of it has been Social Purity Alliances, composed of adults of both sexes, for general moral education, and White Cross Leagues for men only, to pledge them to chastity movements which herald the general reform needed. Since the shock of the moral earthquake caused by Mr. Stead's exposures, which made the guilty tremble on this side of the Atlantic as well, increased attention has been given to the subject here. Statute-books have been studied to find what measure of protection for virtue is given by law to the girlhood of America. The revelation is appalling, and has convinced many that it is not best to entrust to men alone the legislation for crimes which involve so much for womanhood. Those safely sheltered in ease and luxury may not feel so keenly the peril invoked by a law that fixes the age at which the little girl may consent to her own ruin, at ten years; but the mother of toil and poverty, forced to send her daughter out to service when scarce in her teens, often learns all too quickly how such a statute shields the seducer and assailant. It is the poor and the dependent that are made a prey. Since the recent agitation for raising the age of protection for young girls began, encouraging modifications of the law have been made in several States. But in the majority, as in this very capital of the nation, at the present time, the ** age of consent’’ is still ten years. In one State, Delaware, it is seven years. Only one State, Kansas, has raised the age to eighteen, and we should be content with nothing less. In America, the danger from the schemes of the Regulationists, lessens in proportion as light is spread upon this whole Sad problem, and it is spread- ing most hopefully. In this unfolding of woman's era, new moral forces are being called into active service. The mother-heart of the world is find- ing expression in many ways, and it is to be a quickening power in this “latest and greatest crusade of morals,” which reaches the deepest root of what we have been wont to call the “Woman Question.” Our honored pioneers, who, through persecution and ridicule, have voiced the human right and the religious duty for woman to share jointly with man full oppor- tunity for the exercise of her best powers, have broken down the barriers and prepared the way for this reform. The gathering hosts of our White Social Purity. 257 Ribbon Army have given to us our Mrs. Butler in the leadership of Frances E. Willard, and are pledged to guard the homes of the nation in sobriety and purity. White Cross societies are beginning to lay foundations for a chaste manhood, and to train their knights of the new chivalry to protect virtue as gallantly and sacredly as life itself. Through all these regenerating influences we may hope to realize a consecrated fatherhood and mother- hood, that men and women together may reverently strive to meet their joint responsibility in cleansing our social life from its foul stain. So– “Cast in a diviner mold, Let the new cycle shame the old.” Mrs. HARBERT. The one minor strain which we all feel, is the absence of so many of the grand women who have grown gray in the service. We have an able paper from Mrs. Josephine Butler. MARCH, 1888. Zo ſhe ſnfernaţional Council of Women aſ Washingſon : DEAR LADIES: Being prevented by domestic circumstances from attending your assemblies personally, I am glad to entrust a few words of greeting to my dear and honored friend, Mrs. Steward, who has consented to cross the Atlantic at my earnest request, as a delegate from our Ladies' National Association. That association was formed in the winter of 1869, having for its definite aim the obtaining of the repeal of the acts of Parliament of 1866–69 for the state regulation of vice; or, in other words, for the pro- visioning of the army and navy (not in Great Britain alone, but in our Indian Empire and all our colonies) with selected and superintended healthy women. A celibate soldiery, it was said by our heathen legislators of that day, required such a provision as urgently and as regularly as they required daily rations. * Now, I have no reason to suppose that this special subject (always a mournful and repellant one) will be formally brought forward in your con- vention, although the kindred and closely allied subject of personal and social purity will surely be so. It would, however, be impossible for me either to appear at or write to your Convention in the aim of furnishing a contribution to your deliberations, except in connection with my own life- work, and the deep convictions which instigated that life-work, and which have become even more and more profound as I continued in it. The committee of our Ladies' National Association, therefore, strongly desired that a delegate should be selected from our midst who had been associated in that work from an early period, and such an one is Mrs. Steward, who has been indefatigable in her labors, not only in England, but in Bel- gium, for the saving of the English girls bought, stolen, and destroyed under this diabolical system of State-protected vice in that country. There is now a crowd of younger women who are bravely preaching the purity crusade and doing excellent vigilance work; but there are but few of the veterans left 258 International Council of Women. who in 1869 inaugurated the fierce contest with our government, the Houses of Lords and Commons, the medical boards, the press, and the upper classes generally, in order to gain the abolition of the vice-protecting laws, and to assert the equality of the moral law for the two sexes, as well as the dignity and Sacredness of womanhood. Among those veterans were included the names of Florence Nightingale, Harriet Martineau, Mary Somerville, Mary Carpenter, and others. Some are gone to their rest, others are aged and waiting for their call home. Those who remain work together still, bound to each other by strong affection and by the memory of past suffering and conflict shared together. Of this group Mrs. Steward is one, and I com- mend her to your sisterly kindness and hospitality. It may not be out of place here, in order to set forth the motives which drove us to devote ourselves to this crusade before all others, to quote some words which were drawn from me at a great meeting at Leeds in July, 1870. Some of us had been long working for the ‘‘higher education of women.” A council for that end had been formed, embracing members from all the northern parts of England. I was for three years the president of that council. But in 1870, feeling impelled to resign, I thought it right to give my reasons for doing so. I venture to give the words spoken on that occa- sion : “While, therefore, ſ continue to regard the cause of education as most sacred, I come to the present meeting with a saddened heart, and I only propose to relinquish the office I now hold because I feel that God has called me to a more painful one. All members have not the same office; all are not called to descend to the depths of woe, to clear out moral sewers, and to cast in their lot among wretched slave gangs, in order to help the slaves to carry the weight of their chains, if not to break them away. This work, I think, is mine, but there is other work not less holy and which aims not less directly at a future emancipation ; so while I feel all the deeper gratitude to you, my fellow-workers in this Council, for the work you are doing in the cause of humanity, I am obliged to confess to you that, for my own part, I fear I may not in future be able to give the needful time to this work which it demands. I wish to leave it in abler and freer hands. It has my deepest sympathy. It points to one of the most important of all the means by which we hope to “undo the heavy burdens and let the oppressed go free” and inau- gurate a purer and sounder national life. To keep pace, however, with this portion of the great work, one requires to have the head and heart free, and that can not be the case with one who is called to deal with the most misera- ble, to walk side by side, hand in hand, with the outcast, the victim of our social sins, whom one scarcely dares to name in refined society. I am full of hope for the education cause and for the anti-slavery cause in which we are engaged. Nevertheless, my very soul grows faint before the facts of 1870, and though that faintness of soul may complete one's fitness to be a fellow-sufferer with the slave, it does not increase one's capacity for a work which requires intellectual energy.” Social Purity. 259 It is impossible, and would not be right, that I should trouble you with a report of the arduous work which our Women’s Abolitionist Society accomplished between 1869 and 1874. Suffice it to say that we shook the government and aroused the whole nation. Mountains were removed by the energy imparted by a gigantic faith. In 1874 a “new departure” was inaugurated. The battle was carried across the channel to France—where, under the First Napoleon, this abominable and impure tyranny had first been instituted in the end of the eighteenth century—to Italy, to Switzerland, to Germany, and to the Netherlands. It spread afterwards to Spain, Holland, Denmark, Austria, Hungary, and Sweden and Norway. We now have friends in Russia, but no association is yet formed there. In the first report of the Continental work the movement was thus described by our financial secretary, Professor Stuart, M. P. : “It was indeed a wise intuition which led the women of England to carry into its original strongholds the campaign against the system of regulated vice, against whose encroachments we are contending in this country. Not only have we seen, during the year of work just concluded, refuges for the fallen established throughout many cities of Europe, and men and women of many languages joining to call for and work for the abolition of regu- lated prostitution, and to aim through that at the abolition finally of pros- titution itself, but we have seen whole cities shaken as it were with the wind of a new revival, recognizing the crime that they have committed before God, in regulating and licensing the destruction of his image ; we have seen through the length and breadth of nations, societies actively working in a cause which had before lain dormant, and we have seen the whole great nation of Italy, called as it were by the voice of God, through his poor and weak servants, recognizing that virtue and purity alone can be the basis of its future greatness.” In a brief time we had won the public adhesion to our cause of many of the most distinguished persons on the Continent, among whom we counted Joseph Mazzini and Garibaldi, in Italy; Jules Favre, Jules Simon, and Victor Hugo, in France; the Count Agenor de Gasparin and the Countess de Gasparin, of Geneva; Baron de Bunsen and Count Ungern Sternberg, in Germany; M. Emile de Laveleye, the well-known writer and economist, of Belgium, and many others. But it is not so much to the adhesion of the great men that we hold, as to the active concurrence of the thousands of women on the Continent of Eu- rope, who have been awakened on this question and who have formed numerous and ever-increasing associations for working out our aims, more especially in Switzerland, Holland, France, and the Scandinavian peninsula. Our Continental Secretary, M. Humbert, writing on this subject after fourteen years' experience, says: “Happy are those nations in which 260 International Council of Women. women themselves have taken the initiative in this great movement, for in such cases it will never die, whereas in countries where the work is left entirely to men, although some reforms may be achieved, the movement never possesses the same life.” This brings me to speak of our work in the Colonies and in India. It is in allusion to this new expansion that M. Humbert writes the letter just quoted. He continues: “How are we to proceed successfully for the eman- cipation of women from the hateful thraldom imposed on them by the civili- zation of conquering races (the thraldom of compulsory and state regulated prostitution), among Buddhists, Brahmins, Mahometans, or Pagans, where the fate of women, in this world at least, depends absolutely on the will of man, their master. This is a difficult question to answer. We see occasion- ally a spark kindled among those nations, but the light is short lived, and it requires to be continually rekindled.” In spite of these difficulties, however, we are pushing forward our work in Egypt and in the French colonies of North Africa, as well as in other direc- tions. We believe that the question is coming rapidly to the front in India. The present mission of Mr. Dyer to India, is producing an awakening there that will be productive of very decided results, from a parliamentary and governmental point of view. We are more especially concerned with the . awakening of the women of India on the subject of this imperially-imposed degradation of their race, and to kindred questions vitally concerning womanhood. On this side we are full of hope. It is affecting to see the petitions which are now in the hands of some of our Members of Parliament this session. These petitions are from Anglo-Indian and native women, and many are signed in Hindoo characters. The prayer of the petition is for relief from this degrading law. We receive also privately very touching appeals from Indian ladies, and to these our association responds with eager sympathy. The following quotation from one of the replies sent from the Leeds branch of our Abolition Society, will show you the spirit with which the women of the world are communicating with each other on this subject: “Do let us assure you, dear Indian friends, that we have found that, so long as our motives are pure, no evil knowledge can hurt us. We have seen, on the contrary, that work of this kind, undertaken in the spirit of consecration (and in no other spirit can any one endure to continue the work), may lead to a higher and purer knowledge of life and of the human heart ; that many have found, as all must do sooner or later, that intellectual force alone can not guard against the horror of this evil, and have thus been driven to seek more spiritual means of warfare, and so have passed into a higher life. Do be sure, dear friends, that whatever your enemies may say of you, in the invis- ible Kingdom of Righteousness you can but be purified by this labor of love.’’ >}< *k >{< Social Purity. 261 Thus the women of the world are reaching out their hands to each other, and banding themselves together, so that when councils, rulers, and lords of Science endeavor, by decrees, or by Social tyranny, to give a continuance to the most degrading institution which has defiled the history of the human race, they will have the power to say: “You shall not slay us or our sis- ters.” They have struck a note for which the ages have been waiting, and which even the church itself, in its organized ecclesiastical forms, has never yet intoned. There is a point on which I have sometimes thought (possibly without rea: son) that American women feel less strongly than we do. I allude to the physical treatment, forcibly imposed, the personal outrage on women, which lies at the root of the practical working of the whole system of the state regulation of vice. You have happily not had in America the practical experience which we, in the Old World, have had of the degrading effects of this outrage. It is the final and most complete expression of the foul idea of woman as a chattel, a slave, an instrument, a mere vassal, officially dedicated to the vilest uses. At our last International Congress, held at Lausanne, September, 1887, some of our less-instructed followers had been occupying too much of our time in an attempt to defend, up to a certain point, the State's action in tyran- nizing over women. Thinking that the moment had come for a decided word on the part of women themselves, I gave utterance to the thoughts which were in my mind, and in doing so I proclaimed, in the name of all women, that whatever subtlety of argument might weigh with certain doctors, legislators, etc., this was nothing to us, and that we women solemnly declared again the principle of our own dignity, and our determination never to sanction the enslavement of any woman by the outrage perpetrated under this system. At the close of my few words Mme. de Morsier, of Paris, rose, and with uplifted hand asked earnestly that every woman present who agreed with and re-echoed from the depths of her heart, the words of Mrs. Butler, should stand up. The large hall was crowded with women as well as men. The men continued sitting, but every woman rose, and, with the right hand uplifted high, followed the action of Mme. de Morsier and Mme. de Gingins, responding to the solemn words uttered by her : “In the name of God, Amen.” There was a significant silence for a few moments. Some of the gen- tlemen were surprised, most were deeply moved, and to every woman present, I feel convinced, it was a ratification of our principles never to be forgotten. The sound of it went far abroad beyond the mere hall of meeting itself. I mention this incident merely as an illustration of the spirit of our women, in their jealous guardianship of the Sacredness of womanhood even in the per- sons of the most degraded of their sisters. I myself believe this spirit to be thoroughly in accord with that of our Master, Christ. As an inevitable and necessary accompaniment of the establishment of 262 - International Council of Women. licensed houses of ill-fame under government patronage all over the world, there exists, as you all know, the most extensive slave traffic in the interest of vice. This fact has become so fully acknowledged during the last few years as to have given rise to that admirable and much-needed society, the “International Association of Friends of Girls,” originating in Switzerland and now spreading all over and far beyond Europe. That society has been greatly strengthened in England since the congress held in London in 1886; and this fact is brought home to us by the reassuring sight at various railway stations and ladding places, of the warnings and friendly placards so dili- gently distributed and put up by the English branch of the society, inform- ing all girls and women of where they may find friends, and of what dangers they must beware. Our Federation has collected carefully many facts and statistics concerning this world-wide slave traffic. People in Europe speak with indignation of the traffic in negroes. It would be just as well if they would open their eyes to what is going on much nearer, throughout the whole of Europe, especially in Germany and Austria, where the exportation of white slaves is carried on on a large scale. A terrible picture is presented to us of the enforced movement to and fro upon the face of the earth, of these youthful victims of human cruelty. Numbers are em- barked at Hamburg, whose destination is South America, Bahia, and Rio de Janeiro. The greater number are probably engaged for Montevideo and Buenos Ayres; others are sent by the Straits of Magellan to Valparaiso. Other cargoes are sent to North America, some being forwarded through England, others direct. The competition which the traders meet with when they land, sometimes constrains them to go further ahead ; they are found, therefore, descending the Mississippi with their cargoes, to New Orleans and Texas. Others are taken on to California. In the market of California they are sorted, and thence taken to provision the different localities on the coast, as far as Panama. Others are sent from the New Orleans markets to Cuba, the Antilles, and Mexico. Others are taken from Bohemia, Germany, and Switzerland across the Alps to Italy, and thence further south to Alexandria and Suez, and eastward to Bombay, Calcutta, Singapore, Hong-Kong, and Shanghai. The Russian official houses of vice draw their slaves in a great measure from eastern Prussia, Pomerania, and Poland. The most important Russian station is Riga ; it is there that the traders of St. Petersburg and Moscow sort and get ready their cargoes for Nijni-Novgorod, and from this latter place cargoes are sent on to the more distant towns of Siberia. At Tschita a young German was found who had been sold and resold in this manner. You in America are happily free from the state regulation of vice; but, undoubtedly, there is an extensive traffic in white slaves in your midst, and a constant importation to your shores of poor foreigners, who are destined to moral and spiritual destruction. I trust you will, from your Congress, Social Purity. 263 put out strong hands for the abolition of this traffic. It may be that I am writing to some who have been accustomed to think of the poor outcasts of society as beings different from others, in some way tainted from their birth; creatures apart, without the tenderness and capacities for good possessed by your own cherished daughters. You may have imagined them to be for the most part reckless and willful sinners, or, if in the first instance betrayed or forced into sin, now, at least, so utterly destroyed and corrupted as to have become something unmentionable in polite society. Now, all who have had a practical acquaintance with the lives of poor and tempted women, know how mistaken is such a judgment, how cruelly false in most cases. But, granting for the moment that women who have fallen from virtue have become so degraded as to be repulsive or uninteresting to you, what have you to say concerning outraged children P And thousands of these are but children in age and in knowledge. Who will dare to say that any child is determinedly, willfully wicked and degraded; that any child in the world is further from God's kingdom than we grown-up people are, however virtuous we may be P Nay, but ‘‘ of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” One who never errs has said it. We are not told that He selected an exceptionally pure and holy child when He set a little child in the midst of the multitude and said that, except we become as such a little child we shall in nowise enter the Kingdom of Heaven; verily, “their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in Heaven; ’’ and woe be to that man, to that nation, to those mothers of men and of nations, who, seeing that little child fallen among thieves, robbed, wounded, murdered, dying, shall calmly pass by on the other side A day is coming in which it will not avail any of us to say we knew it not ; for now we know it. The means of knowing it and the means of helping to redress this wrong are within our reach, at our very hand. I cherish the hope and the belief that the time is at hand when all women who are indeed at heart mothers and worthy of the name, will give up the chilling reserve which seems too much like acquiescence in evil, and will come forward to the res- cue, not only for the sake of the innocent and betrayed, but for the sake of their sons and of our national life. This letter is sent forth with the earnest prayer that, while pardoning the im- perfections of my poor appeal, God would make use of it, to fan the holy and purifying fire which, I feel sure, is already kindled in your hearts. Whe I kneel in my chamber to plead for the deliverance of these little ones for whom Christ died, I seem to see the childish faces gathering in crowds around me, filling the space on every side—the faces of the slaughtered dead as well as of the living. These victims, voiceless and unable to plead their own cause, seem to make their ceaseless, mute appeal from their scattered, unknown graves, and from out those dark habitations of cruelty where they are now helplessly imprisoned. But their weeping has been heard in Heaven, 264 International Council of Women. and judgment is at hand. Of their destroyers it may be said: “They mur- der the fatherless, yet they say the Lord shall not see it.” Of you, O friends, let it be said, and let the Savior himself speak the words: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto me.” I am yours in the service of God and of humanity, Joseph INE E. BUTLER. Mrs. HARBERT. It is with great pleasure I present to you Mrs. Laura Ormiston Chant, delegate from the Edinburgh Branch of the Federation for Repeal of State Regulation of Vice, whose chief officers are Jennie M. Wellstood, Eliza Wigham, and Elizabeth Pease Nichol. Mrs. CHANT. My sisters, do you know what you represent this morning P You represent all the centuries of womanhood crowded here under the roof of this building, who, from terrible persecution and shame and silence, have protested against the double standard of morals for men and women. There isn't one single woman in this great multitude who is not a living protest before Almighty God, that while life is given to us to breathe, to speak, with power to touch each other, we will none of us have part or lot in that which has been the curse of the world and the ruin of dynasties. Whether you know it or not, you are a protest against the pitiful figure of the girl, three hundred years ago, as she crept through the cholera-stricken streets of Naples, with a yellow handkerchief around her neck to mark that she was at the lib- erty of every man who chose to violate the solemn bond of sex; compelled by the government, backed by the law made by man. There was not a single outcast woman of Naples who was not to be known by a broad, yellow handkerchief which she wore around her neck. You are a protest against the poor woman in the tribe of the Vandals when they made war on the Goths, when she was obliged to receive three hundred lashes because she was a woman of light conduct; but it was not because she was a woman of light conduct that she received them, but because she was found out in her light conduct—in her sin, as it was deemed by the superior virtue of the men who administered the lashes upon her shoulders; and she threw herself down upon her knees and cried with a language which I have not heard, but which I understand: “Give him half; give him half.” You are a protest against the women who have been walking, and I shame to say it, through the main towns in England, in fear, at every turn in the street, of having a hand laid on their shoulder by a man and being walked off, either to the lock-up or that other terrible torture chamber. You are a protest against the girl of fifteen or sixteen who was walking through the streets of Dover, when two stalwart men walked up behind her—she was an innocent, bright looking girl, but they had the power—and if this girl was of a light life they had the right to do this very thing, to take her and lock her up on the charge of light life; and when the hunted girl had found that there was no refuge for her in human justice, that humauity had no Social Purity. 265 help for her, she preferred the great waves of the sea, and threw herself over the dock; and when these two men, guardians of law and order, saw the struggling girl in the water, they said it was all right and went away. But a boatman saw her, went to her, and took her in his boat and landed her. And when the two men saw that she was rescued, they hurried to the place, and took the girl again and brought her before the magistrate on the charge of suicide; and the magistrate counselled her and warned her, and it was only at very great expense that we got a lawyer down from London to prove, as no man can prove, that she had not outraged her own purity, but was supporting her old father in working as a charwoman at eighteen pence a day. You have heard how we in England got those laws repealed. It was a gala day in England that you can hardly imagine when, at Westminster, the votes were taken and we found we had achieved such an unparalleled victory. I can hardly speak of it to-day, for I have not done thrilling with what I felt when a telegram came to me from a Member of Parliament: “Thank God, the victory is ours.” After that came the terrible story in the Paſ/A/a// Gazeſłe, and then I think the whole world was divided into two great camps, and the one camp was composed of those who said, “Never mind what is done, so long as it isn’t spoken about,’’ and the other camp said, “If these things are done, they shall be spoken about until they are swept away.” And we had the most magnificent demonstration in Hyde Park that can be conceived. There could not have been less than a hundred thousand peo- ple at it, and in all probability there were a hundred and fifty thousand. And the news of it only reached the United States in fragments ; the reason of it was this—that there was a huge conspiracy on the part of the London press not only to write it down, but to ignore it altogether. One paper said there might have been five thousand people in Hyde Park that afternoon, but only fifteen hundred of them had come to witness the demonstration, and we said it seemed as if, in trying to teach the world morality, we should first have to try to teach our men to count. That demon- stration meant that at last the silence was broken and the spirit of God had moved upon this great sea of human passion. I have been twenty-five years engaged in behalf of my own sex, and my hair is not gray yet, and I can say that the marvelous change in the character of our work, not only the demon- strations in Hyde Park, but the awakening of public conscience, have been, in great part, due to the brave pen of Mr. Stead. In the early days it was not an uncommon thing for me to address three or four hundred women, and to have every one of them come with a veil on her face. I have sometimes laughed, even when I have been in the midst of a solemn speech, to see the veils gradually lifted up and put under the chairs. We do not have veiled ladies now, and we do not find if difficult to get the largest meet- ings we ever have in England, on the matter of social purity. 18 266 International Council of Women. We had a meeting recently at Colston Hall in Bristol, which seats 5, ooo, and that night it had to hold 6,oco, and some of the speakers rode to the hall in the mayor's carriage. They made a civic thing of it, which, I assure you, is an honor in England—to go to a purity meeting in the mayor's carriage. All over the country we are spreading the organizations which were formed right on the face of Mr. Stead's terrible articles in the Paſ/Ma// Gazette. None of us who have been doing the rescue-work doubted the absolute accu- racy of those articles. I myself would have staked my reputation upon their truth, because I know. But even supposing we had not known that, we had only to turn to the Blue Book, which had been published by and received the sanction of the House of Lords ten years before that, to show that a traffic more terrible than any Mr. Stead ever laid bare in his articles, had been known and had been enrolled in the statute-books of the nation. I possess a copy of this Blue Book, and when anybody tells me that this is an exag- geration, I say, “If you have the courage to stand by your convictions, you shall sit down in my writing-room and read the most agonizing review that ever came to the world at the hands of men, some of whom would have given all their wealth not to indorse the truth of the statements, because they were concerned. We are forming a net-work for the carrying out of the law that was made on the face of that assertion. We would carry it out so that we would no longer have the age of twelve, as a limit at which our children could be protected. Let me give you a sample of how we do our work. We had in one place a Member of Parliament so dastardly that he sat in his place in our House of Commons and said that, for his part, he would like to have the age lower. Didn't he speak to eager ears in that ladies' gallery And one of them went down to the place he represented and the good women there got meetings together and we made the place so hot for him that he didn’t dare to come before the people. There is nothing like bringing the great fire of passion- ate and reverent love, to burn up this chaff that is hiding the wheat from the World. Then we formed these organizations because the trade was going on and our law did not meet the needs of the transportation of these girls out to New York, out to Canada, out to Madras and Bombay and Antwerp and St. Petersburg. There were thousands being taken under the guise of domestic service. Briefly, I will tell you this—that at our principal railway-stations in London and the ports of England to-day, we have ladies of high char- acter and good social position, who walk these stations and walk those ports from morning to night, in turn, that they may watch the outgoing of passen- gers to the ships. I myself have done that work, so I know what I am talk- ing about. It has been a passionate desire of mine that that work should be done, long before we threw it into the hands of the Travelers' Aid Associa- tion, under the auspices of the Young Woman's Christian Association and our National Vigilance Association. Social Purity. 267 I will just give you one instance. One day, three years ago, I went to Charing Cross, which is the station for Folkestone, and from Folkestone they go to the Continent; and I sat in the waiting-room and saw a most miserable hag of a woman with a poor, wretchedly-appearing, crying girl. I did not know then the state of this trade, and I said to her, “Dear, what are you crying for P’’ And the girl didn't answer me, and I thought she might be deaf. Then the old hag came up and shook her fist in my face and said, “How dare you speak to that girl?” I felt very uncomfortable. I knew there was some terrible wrong there ; so I went up to a policeman and spoke to him, not as a policeman, but as a man who knew about such things, and I said: “Will you see about that? There is something wrong.” “Oh,” said he, “lots of them go over to the Continent—lots of them. It is just their own doing, and they like to go.” Then there was no law to touch it—not a single power to stop that girl. Three years after the law was on our side. I was in Charing Cross station again last year, and there sat in the wait- ing-room that same old hag, with another miserable girl. Now I had the law on my side, and I went up to the girl and said: “Dear, where are you going P” She said: “I am going to service in Boulogne.” I said: “Are you sure you are P To whom are you going P” She said: “I looked out for a situation at my home in Essex, and the clergyman's wife gave me the newspaper and we read the advertisement saying that girls were wanted for the refreshment bar, and good wages given and great care taken, and a com- fortable home, and I am going.” And I said: “No ; you are not.” And I went to our Vigilance Council, of which I am a member, and I made one of the lawyers, who is a member of it, go out with me. We went back to the station and we telegraphed to our association, and said: “Stop an elderly woman with a girl, for we are making inquiries.” I had got from the girl the address of the clergyman's wife in Essex. I telegraphed: “Have you any knowledge of where this girl is going? Do you personally know them P '' She telegraphed: “No ; we have only written references.” And we telegraphed again, and it was just half an hour before the boat started from Folkestone, “Stop that woman and give her into custody.” And we did, and the woman turned out to be a procuress of a great many years' standing ; and we think we have stopped, at any rate, a branch of this most infamous trade. And we kept that girl at her home in Essex and showed her how it was better to earn her own living at small wages in En- gland, under those who knew her, than much larger wages, where every penny made, meant a nail in the coffin of her happiness, her purity, and her love. We have dens of infamy in our London ; I don’t know about your Wash- ington. I walked through your streets at twelve, half-past twelve, at one, half-past one, this morning, and I saw a spectacle so amazing that I tell you it that you may feel it. I was blank and dumb this morning, in that hour and a half, when I walked the streets and saw your beautiful Capitol, standing 268 International Council of Women. white against the sky in the moonlight, and in all this time I met not one single girl or woman. In London I should have met a tribe of them, painted, bejewelled, brazen, talking with drunken men, themselves half drunken, making their bargains of shame at the corner of every street. I have felt, “Oh, dear new country, you have one advantage over our England, at any rate you have not this sinful traffic going on in your streets at night.” All this has come to us from the centuries of monastic rule and feudalism, and it has made such a stain on our world and our life that only the waves of ob- livion can sweep it away. But I do pray you women here, as you value your country and the future, don’t let one single chink of the door be opened toward the regulation of this horrible wrong. It will be your ruin, as I believe it was the ruin of Greece and Rome, and Carthage and ancient Egypt. Years ago I did the same walking in Antwerp, and there again it was a clear moonlight night ; and as in my walk I stood outside a house that was lighted, I saw there two policemen with Swords. Up to the door there came a cab and I waited, and out of that house there came a shawled figure, as of some one who was very ill. She passed me on the pavement, and a policeman took each side of her and bundled her roughly into the cab, and she groaned, and the only sigh that I shall hear from that sister of mine on this side of Jordan, was the one cry of pain that has gone up from the women all over the world. Oh, God 1 she was compelled to be in that house, with those policemen there in the name of the state to keep her fast to her sin for those who had bought her; and if she refused at the bidding of her masters to do the thing for which, they bought her, no matter how loathsome her companion, those policemen were to take her—the only time she goes out—before a magistrate to be sentenced for two or three months' hard labor for refusing to submit to the terrible outrage And there came a poor woman and said to me in German : “Oh, madam, from the time they go in they never leave, except to go to the hospital or the graveyard. The hospital first and the graveyard after.” And this, my sister, was going to her death ! Then while you ask every one here to overcome this, it is of no use ; all our religion, all our science is in vain, while underneath us there is this corroding cancer of unequal standards for men and women. I will tell you what we are doing. We are forming associations for the protection of women, so that nowhere shall any girl be unprotected. And out of this is coming a higher and better education. It is very well to take up work out of pity, but if you only take it up for that, your work is sure to be a failure. You may begin by pity, as I did, but you must learn to grasp principles and to work on those principles. We have had long years of rescue-work in our England, done by very good ladies, who, I hope, will excuse me for saying it, had not an idea of a principle and drew their dresses around them, away from woman Social Purity. 269 kind, and they said, piously : ‘‘We thank thee, God, that we are not as other women are.” And what have women to do with politics? It has been a splendid education for women to learn what politics have to do with them. Some of us, myself included, were possessed of that strong cowardice which shrinks so much from the publicity of this work. I will tell you what made me come to it; it was being a mother; just as a lioness and not the lion stands out to protect her cubs, so I realized it was the mother who should stand out to protect her children far more than the father. When I looked at those little girls of mine, I realized that I was responsible for their exist- ence; I realized that it was I who had molded them spiritually and physi- cally ; I realized with pride that it was I who said when they should come and how often. I felt that my responsibility was far higher even than my husband's, in taking a public part in the protection of all other girls, and that it is much better to speak about evil while it exists, than to keep silence. - I have the great honor of having been one to put the new criminal law into force, and it was in this wise: We have done years of work, and have gone into bad houses to get poor little girls out of them. We have gone in peril of our lives, but I stand unmaimed and happy before you this morning. I do not understand being afraid. We went into these houses, and if the little girl was over twelve we could not get her out. Then came the criminal law bill. Just then I got an agonized letter from a poor man down in the country, saying: “My little girl of fifteen went up to service, and her mother and I are very, very poor, and can not go to her and see what is up with her, for she writes such queer letters.” Oh, mothers, I hope never in all your lives will you receive such letters from your children. This little girl of fifteen writes: “I am in such a nice place; they are so kind to me; they have me down in the drawing-room every night, and one of the gentlemen here has promised me a gold watch and chain ; ” and that girl had gone there as a scullery maid. And then another dread- ful letter: That such a fine gentleman, with a gold chain and fine clothes and a moustache, had asked her to go home and live with him, as he wants a little girl; he has lost his. Poor little child ! And the agonized father wrote: “She is in the very jaws of death.” And in our society we talked about this, and they said to me: “ This child should be taken from this place at once ; ’’ and I said, How P They said somebody must do it. And I said, Who? And they said, You. And I took the train and went down to the country and came to a beautiful place, with a fine mansion, surrounded with trees and lawns and a carriage-drive around it, and it seemed a terrible. thing to go up to that door, as if it were a bad house, as it was. º Those are the bad houses in our country; they are far more dangerous than those in the miserable alleys of London. When I got part of the way up the carriage-drive there was a notice, “Beware of the dogs; they 270 International Council of Women. are running about the grounds and are very savage.” Then I knew it was no English gentleman's house. Nowhere in England are such notices as that in gentlemen's places. I went to the door, and, oh, thank God! the very person who opened the door was that little girl, with dark, sweet eyes, like my own little girl's, and I said to her, “Emma, my child, I have come to take you out of this place.” And the girl looked sulky and didn’t want to go, so I said, “Run down the carriage-drive, and in that cab your sister sits, with a letter from your father.” I thought if she saw her father's letter the girl wouldn't be able to stand-out then. And while she was gone I took stock of that dreadful house and its spring doors and locks, and everything for making it easy for anybody to get in, and everything making it impossible for anybody to get out. I went into the drawing-room, at the invitation of the hostess, and I kept my boot inside the lintel, so if they slammed that door on me it would crush my foot first, and I had to stand a battle of an hour, in the name of the law, for this little child. I had no ordinary enemy to deal with. I had a woman with a face so cruel that if I flinched or faltered for one moment, I think my life would have paid the price. But I was calm and cool, and behind me was God, and I had no need to be afraid. I took the child out, and put the law in force, and we got that house closed and its infamous trade stopped. But we are educating our people. We have meetings in the afternoon, of women alone, and mixed meetings in the evening. Although I have addressed meetings of men alone, I greatly prefer mixed audiences, as I am afraid that men and women will lose sight of the fact that they are equally responsible. We have to enter, too, into the question of housing the poor, and we see that it is almost impossible to bring up moral and decent girls and boys, where father and mother and seven, eight, or nine children are herded together in one room in the close contact and friction of every-day life. But there are ladies like Miss Steer in the East End of London, who are solving this problem, which men deem impossible. There was a house down by the London dock; it was a place so terrible that when the police spoke of it in the courts they called it the “Bridge of Sighs,” because of the girls who committed suicide there. And Miss Steer, with some other ladies, went and bought that house and made it a Bridge of Hope, and now it is a hope for all the poor women and girls there. - One more story. It came to my ears when I was a sister nursing in the East End of London. There came to my ward a mother, of between six- teen and seventeen, very young, with a terrible hurt on the side of her head, and the cause of it was that she had thrown herself and her baby off London Bridge. She had been ruined by her lover in a Berkshire town, and the only place for the poor, agonized, expectant mother to go to was the work- house, and they don’t treat such women very kindly there; and when she Social Purity. 271 came out she had to go before a board of guardians, all men, with her baby in her arms, and she was censured by those men and cautioned not to repeat her offense. If half of the board of guardians had been women, I think the man would have been standing there to have been censured for his part; and the girl cried so bitterly that one of the guardians said: “Stop ; let her go out,” and he followed her out and gave her a shilling, and said: “Lassie, don’t cry; you won't mind when you come back again.” The girl walked all the way up to London, and was taken up by a policeman as a vagrant, and at last, in her agony, she had pitched herself over the bridge. And outside that hospital, day after day, was a policeman waiting to take that girl in custody, to be charged and tried for the murder of her baby, and either hung or sent to prison for ten or fifteen years. I was sitting by her, giving her loving tenderness and counsel, and between two and three o'clock in the morning I had said to her our God would be with her in her prison cell, and would give her work to do and comfort her as never man had, and I told her of the motherhood of God ; I told her how God was mother and father, and how men had forgotten it ; and her face grew radiant, and when I had given her a spoor ful of arrowroot she raised herself up, and said: “Sister, sister, you have been kind to me, at least. God bless you; good- night; ‘’ and she fell back on her pillow, dead. I want you to go away this morning and vow to God upon your knees, vow to the best part of yourself, that you will not only listen and cheer and applaud, but throw into form your convictions, and let us have upon this earth a harmonious, glorious band of women everywhere, who will bring in the golden day when the sorrow and sin of the sexual relationship shall be no more, and home shall be home indeed. Miss ANTHONY. Permit me to read you a poem by Mrs. Chant, a poem of greeting to this Council. It was printed and five hundred copies sent over to us by that beautiful and noble woman, Mrs. Priscilla Bright McLaren, of Edinburgh. - ** FROM ENGLAND TO AMERICA.” Clasp hands, O friends, across the broad Atlantic | Touch ours with yours, athwart the mighty sea! So that we feel the thrilling of your pulses Stirring our own to cordial sympathy. What though the clamor of uncounted billows Racks the resounding air from shore to shore, Waiting, we listen for the tender echoes Rising above them, ever more and more. Echoes of prayers, from lips of kneeling women, Echoes of songs, that chant of what shall be In the glad day when justice, truth, and freedom, Welcome the universal jubilee. We in our little island, for our thousands, Fight the brave fight that can not know defeat; You in your larger country, for your millions. Tread the long march that never can retreat. 272 International Council of Women. We too, like you, are passing from the portal Of the dull prison of our womanhood, Into the glorious sunshine of the future, Into the free, pure air of equal good. Over the mountain rising high before us, Dark with the gloomy mists of prejudice, Lies the long road that leads to light supernal, Stony and steep, past crag and precipice. Reach out your hands, O sisters, o'er the ocean, Union is strength ; ours we to you extend, So that with clasp of love, and highest courage, We may press on together to the end. Mrs. HARBERT. I now have the pleasure of introducing Mrs. Caroline M. S. Frazar, delegate of the Moral Education Society of Boston. Mrs. FRAZAR. The Boston Moral Education Association was organized in 1873, with Mrs. Caroline M. Severance as President, and as the work unfolded many have been enrolled, until now we have thirty-seven members, with Mrs. Kate Gannett Wells, as President, whose varied interests in philan- thropy have eminently fitted her to meet the issues that from time to time are presented for deliberation and action. We have endeavored to deepen the conviction of those who feel that personal righteousness is the bulwark of a nation's strength, and to arouse the consciences of all others who are only too willing to condone any offense which is not penal. We distribute leaflets and tracts, make personal appeals, and in many other ways endeavor to im- press the women of the less-favored walks of life with a sense of the duties they owe to their children. With the limited means of a membership fee, we make yearly contributions for suppression of legislation on the social-evil acts, and for seven years a committee of our ladies have appeared to gov- ernors, mayors, legislators, police commissioners, that matrons be appointed in station-houses. These efforts have been attended with discouragements too well known by those pioneers in this work. More recently, by the united efforts of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the Suffragists, the Industrial and Educational Union, and others, we have succeeded, and a State law has been enacted whereby every city in our Commonwealth, numbering 30, ooo and upward, may have police matrons. To-day we have a house of detention in process of equipment, and our police wagon has done service. The question naturally arose, Where are the women to fill these positions as matrons P And, to our surprise, the number of applicants has enabled us to have a choice; therefore, a committee of twenty ladies, chosen from the various organizations represented in this work, has been appointed to examine into the fitness of the applicants for these arduous duties. Last year we contributed to the Travelers' Friendly Aid Association. The services of a most estimable woman were secured, and we hope in time this enterprise will be extended over the country wherever a railroad line is in operation. Mrs. HARBERT. It is not necessary for me to introduce to this audience Social Purity. 273 Dr. Caroline B. Winslow, but it is my pleasure to greet her upon this plat- form as President of the Moral Education Society of the District of Colum- bia, and editor of 7%e A/a. THE STARTING POINT. Dr. WINSLOW. The human race is the latest evolution and the crowning point in the order of creation ; with an organization most complex and per- fect, while possessing rudimentary traces of all lower orders of life, we are endowed with a near kinship to Jehovah by the gift of reason, and the power to discriminate and to choose between good and evil; and our capacity for growth is without limit, even to the attainment of Godlike attributes. We are slowly emerging from a period of childhood—an age of impulse, passion, and appetite—and nearing maturity, where wisdom should guide and knowl- edge illumine the pathway of life. As men and women we should be ashamed to cry for toys or sweets with which to gratify our gustatory relish. When we reach our majority in men- tal and moral growth, we shall be equally ashamed of our greed for gain, our lusts of the flesh, our drunkenness, and gluttony. We shall see more clearly that the important point to make is in the beginning of each new life; that each child to be born, starts right, with its dower of will and harmonized forces, lest we be covered with confusion at the inherited imperfections of offspring. By reason and analogy the laws of transmission, heredity, and pre-natal influence, confirm the fact that children are born by our own voli- tion, begotten in our own image and after our own likeness. Fathers and mothers have the power to produce a higher type, or at least an improved type, of humanity with each generation. We can no longer take refuge under the plea of ignorance, for these facts are so generally known that even children hold in their hearts and on their lips blessings or maledictions for their progenitors. To know to what extent this is true, one has only to place one's self in the attitude of a social reformer to become the confidante of many sufferers. My correspondence the past fifteen years, has opened to my knowledge the depth of horrors humanity can endure and exist. The awful maledictions they engender, make one shudder to contemplate. These confidences make such painful appeals for help and sympathy. I have a package of letters from a young man of talent, good education, and a strong desire to live a pure and useful life. In boyhood he ignorantly ruined his health, and, when he resolved to rise above his depressed condition, his own folly, his hered- ity, and environment weighed him down like an incubus. His appeals are most touching. He says, “If you can not help me, what am I to do? My mother cursed me with illegitimacy and hereditary insan- ity. I have left only the alternative of suicide or the mad-house. What an awful charge against the memory of a mother—an inheritance of lust, in- sanity, and suicide l’’ 274 International Council of Women. Is there a mother within the sound of my voice that would not rather the rocks should fall and hide her than bear such a reproach from the blighted life of her child P In the associations represented in this International Council, all have been organized with more or less wisdom. Each has achieved a measure of success, yet none has been wholly successful. But how soon each Society reaches its limitations and halts before what seem to be impass- able barriers How many, inspired with hope and enthusiasm, have, with spent force, become conscious of having accomplished but little good, with a great outlay of effort and treasure In early life I had many such ventures. I know them well. I did not reach down to the bottom fact of human irregularities and weaknesses. I did not begin at the beginning and “start right.” Many of you may have had a similar experience. One of the original Ohio temperance crusaders told me, that after ten years of prayer and the most strenuous effort, the soci- ety to which she belonged had reformed just enough drunkards to show that Some could be saved, but the number was exceedingly small and the increase of drunkenness enormous. A similar experience is the result of what is called “rescue-work.” While all wrong-doers, all weak and sinful ones, should receive a helping hand, and be given opportunities to rise higher, let us cease this surface work of patching and reforming and look deeper into the origin of evil. Let us spend the best of our strength in preventing vice and suffering. The future of our race lies in your hands, Oh, woman! it is for you to mould the new life into forms of vigor and grace. This can be done by self-puri- fication, high thinking, and upright living. The laws of transmission are not difficult to understand or obey. We possess the legacies of past ages, the developments of modern science, and the increase of mental and spir- itual force, for aids. It is very possible to utilize these acquisitions, and with a little common sense, apply them to the most momentous, and by far the most important, act of life—the begetting and creating of new forms of intelligence. You hold the power to cast each new conception in angelic mould as nearly as self-culture and self-discipline can make yourselves angelic. Children thus born are only blessings. In after-life they wrestle successfully with temptations. They do not anticipate insanity or suicide, nor curse their existence or the memory of their parents. So it becomes of the first importance, that you strive to make the “starting point ’’ of each child's life harmonious and beautiful—beginning its education and discipline while you have complete control of its existence—endowing it with physical and men- tal strength—preparing it to be well born. - - Marriage is called a sacred institution. I agree it should be sacred and holy, but is it? If so, why are the fruits of marriage so defective P Why are the children of religious, intelligent citizens, often reckless and unprin- Social Purity. 275 cipled persons? The records of our free lodging-houses, almshouses, police stations, jails, and penitentiaries have on their list the names of descendants of our best citizens—persons that have received good education, with moral and religious instruction. They are often members of the liberal profes- sions—doctors, lawyers, ministers, artists, professors, and military men. Many of our poor, debased sisterhood are religiously educated. They are familiar with Sunday-school hymns and church catechisms, showing they sprang from apparently well-regulated families. Why, then, are they leading such shameful lives 2 May it not be because of the habitual violation of the laws of chastity and continence within the pale of marriage, putting that which is sacred and holy to unclean uses 2 It is the testimony of Dr. Sawyer, as well as the keepers of brothels and houses of assignation, that these dens of infamy do not look for their support from young and unmarried men, but from men that have sworn before God allegiance to one woman. These men are often fathers as well as husbands. The United States census of 188o presents this appalling summary: In the ten years since the census of 1870 the population of our country had increased 30 per cent., but the defective class had increased 155 per cent. The insane, idiotic, blind, deaf mutes, prisoners, and paupers are enumerated as defectives. º What you sow, that shall you reap. If you sow the seed of selfishness, and discord, and lust in the most impressible stages of life, these conditions become incorporated into the innermost being of the child you carry under your heart. Your children are cast in your own likeness, and reflect your conditions at the time of conception and during the nine months of gesta- tion. This knowledge largely increases the responsibility of parentage, and addresses itself especially to the moral perceptions of woman, teaching her what a high and holy calling is hers And, dear sisters, with this new freedom of thought and action, you must take the lead in high thinking and pure living. You must attend conscien- tiously to the pre-natal, as well as post-natal education of children. You must instruct your sons and daughters in physiology; the good uses to which these functions must be applied. You must teach the joy of obedi- ence to procreative law, and the awful penalties that follow violations. These duties are due to yourselves, your children, Society, and, above all, to your God, that he be no longer dishonored in marriage. With Gerrit Smith I exclaim : “Heaven speed the day when man shall be expected to blush as quick and as deep as woman at any degree of impurity—when the churches, public opinion, the schools, and the whole world shall demand the same mental and moral character, strength, beauty, and delicacy for man as for woman, for woman as for man. There is but one standard of morality for both man and woman, and as long as a different standard is tolerated, both sexes will be perverse and corrupt.” 276 International Council of Women. Mrs. HARBERT. I now have the pleasure of introducing to you the Pres- ident of the National Woman Suffrage Association of Massachusetts, Mrs. Harriette R. Shattuck. Mrs. SHATTUCK. It is my habit to go to the foundation of things, so far as I can, and find those principles which shall be of universal application ; and it has seemed to me that there are two points in the consideration of ethical questions which are likely to be overlooked. One of these is that we need a standard of conduct by which we may solve ethical problems; the other is to try to find the philosophical, and, therefore, the true nature of marriage. We need very much a standard of conduct which would be applicable to all cases, so that we may have something better to guide our actions by than merely the subjective standard of our own individual opinions or convictions; that is, something better than the idea that because an act seems right to me, therefore I am justified in doing it. There are many questions of the day which are decided on this narrow basis, such as the right to tell little white lies, the right of a starving man to steal a loaf of bread, the right of a man to vote with his party, regardless of whether that party is true to its prin- ciples; and, finally, our special question this morning, the one standard of purity, is often subjected to this common criterion, and it is claimed that in certain individual cases unchastity is excusable. Now, we want a better rule than this. We want an objective standard, a universal principle, outside of our mere individual decisions, which shall enable us to decide, to solve, one by one, the problems that vex our lives. The nearest approach to this absolute standard of morality, this law of God, which some day we shall more clearly see, is this : Not because an act is right for me am I justified in doing it, unless it is also right for you—for all of us. If a certain course would bring benefit to the world by all per- sons acting in accordance with it, I may pursue that course. If all of us may not do so with benefit to the world, I may not. An act is right for me if and because it is right for you, or for every one ; an act is wrong for me if and because its effects would be bad if all were to do it. The whole must decide the duty for the part. That act, the result of which would be bene- ficial if all were to do it, I may do. Let me illustrate : Is it right for me in a given case to tell a lie P Would it be right if all persons told falsehoods in cases when each thought it excusable? What would be the result P. We see that no one could be believed ; that truth would be destroyed ; consequently, it is wrong for me to tell the lie. The same with stealing. I would not condemn the starving man for stealing the loaf of bread. I would excuse him and help him ; but is his act right? Would it be right for all? Or would honesty disappear, the world be able to trust nobody, and a standard of honor be impossible 2 It is clear that this would be the result. There- fore, I may not steal. It is the same with our question of the one standard Social Purity. 277 of purity for both sexes. It is right for one person to be impure in any case if it would be also right for all persons to be so. Would the result be bene- ficial to the world if all were unchaste P There is no question of the terri- ble result of any such general impurity. Therefore, it is wrong for any one of us, and it makes no difference whether that one be a man or a woman. Here enters the great question of forgiveness. When may the one who has sinned be forgiven 2 The answer to this is that when repentance comes forgiveness enters, for forgiveness is contingent upon repentance. So only, Christ forgave. It rests with the one who has been wronged, with God, to forgive the repentant sinner. I should forgive, you should forgive, the man who has wronged us, but I have no right to forgive the man who has wronged another woman. With her alone, and with God, rests his case. This is a universal principle, and may be applied to every case. It is our duty so to apply it. For when we have found a principle, then we have a criterion—a universal, in which all particulars are included, and with which they are at one. Secondly, as to the true nature of marriage. It is often considered as a contract. Now, what is a contract P It is a something that relates only to external things—such, for instance, as property. A contract is always sub- ject to dissolution by the mutual agreement of the contracting parties. It can be dissolved when both wish and agree. That marriage is a contract, is held by those who advocate anarchy, as I heard expressed at a meeting not long ago in Boston. And the result of this idea would be anarchy indeed, for it would dissolve all marriages, destroy the family life of the community. But marriage is not a contract, and, therefore, it can not be dissolved by mutual agreement. Here enters the whole question of divorce, which I have no time to consider. I will say that a separation for a cause which destroys the sacredness of the marriage relation and imperils the birthright of the children is one thing, while a divorce, with the privilege of remarrying, is quite another thing. As Hegel expresses it, “ contract is the expression of the accidental will of man (that which is arbitrary, imperfect, undevel- oped, in his nature), as distinguished from the universal will of man, or that which is grounded in the necessity of his nature.” And the family is the outgrowth of this universal, necessary nature of mankind, of the spiritual nature. It is an expression of the universal, objective truth, an outcome of man's personality, which is his by virtue of his oneness with the Divine, the personal Father of whom he is the personal child. In so far as he is at one with this divine personality, he himself is personal and universal. Marriage is, therefore, a sacred institution, grounded in the divine nature of man as a child of God. It is an ethical relation, not a mere formal one. Its existence is not arbitrary—dependent upon the caprice of the two who have assumed the relation—but necessary, dependent upon the moral nature of man as a spiritual being. Marriage, therefore, is one of the absolute principles upon which the ethical character of society rests. To quote He- 278 International Council of Women. gel: “Marriage is essentially a spiritual relation. The acknowledgment and maintenance of this relation is an express enthronement of the spiritual over the natural. It involves the subjection of the passions and of the special changing likes and dislikes of the individual, to the law of a common life, a common law, and a common good.” - Mrs. HARBERT. I have the pleasure now to introduce Mrs. S. Magelssen Groth, delegate of the Norwegian Women's Suffrage Association. Mrs. GROTH, I am sure I am pleased to be here and to attend all the meetings of the Council.” The question, Are women to enjoy equal rights with men in political, civil, and social matters, is not very old in Norway—that is to say, the principal demand for equality has only been made public for a few years; but our women have, I think, from old times been independent in feelings and actions. Our Saga tales record wives and young girls with wills of their own, and the ancient national poetry sings not only of Sweet Ingeborg and loving, true- hearted Gudrun, but also of the proud, beautiful Brynhild, who will not marry any but the most valiant of men, and who, when she learns that she has been deceived, is not afraid of plotting her lover's death and afterward killing herself. And among our peasants—the veritable Norwegians and owners of the land—there has, as I understand, always been, and still is, as much respect for women's work and duties as for men's. But these ideas were slumbering in the depth of our national character as vague notions without any certain form, That they have been called forth at all, and that the cause of women has been so far advanced as is the case, is due chiefly to our poets and authors. The woman’s first and most faithful champion is Camilla Collett, the sis- ter of one of our first and greatest poets, and herself a first-class author. She raised the woman question about forty years ago, in her great and bril- liant romance, “Amtmandens Doetre '' (the Daughters of the Governor). But her contemporaries failed to appreciate her, and the author had to retire into herself, disgusted at the lack of understanding that was shown her, especially from her own sex. Now, certainly, the women of Norway under- stand their great obligation to this powerful genius, and I am glad to say that Mrs. Collet has lived to see this universal admiration. Henrik Ibsen, our great dramatist, then took up the woman question, and a new era can be dated from the appearance of his “ Dukkehjem ’’ (‘‘A Doll's Parlor’’), in the year 1879. Here the unworthy condition of most women within marriage, how they make a living by “performing tricks for their husbands,” was shown with such force and vigor, that it struck the women like a thunderbolt, and at once caused that change in the public opinion, that had for a long time been under preparation. Ibsen's indirect appeal to women, to seek and maintain independence, was met with an eager- * Mrs. Groth's address was not read by her, she simply said a few words of greeting in reply to her introduction to the audience. Social Purity. 279 ness that was due to the very conditions of life. In Norway, as anywhere else, men are too scarce to allow of all women becoming married. And now Ibsen had shaken the marriage, as the monopolized asylum for women, and exhorted our women toward independence. The first step in that direction, quite naturally, is the ability of supporting one's self. Public opinion was changed, and it was no longer considered “unladylike ’’ for a woman to support herself, but the difficulty for a woman in Norway, as anywhere else, I suppose, was and is a double one : the very small opportunities for women of getting work, relatively to the great number wanting it; and, second, the very poor remuneration that their work will yield them, if they succeed in getting it. I can not here, however, praise our Norwegian women for originality and initiative faculty. Although of late different kinds of posi- tions, have been opened for women, as telegraph operators, drug clerks, cashiers, as clerks in private offices and even in some governmental depart- ments, still, most ladies turn to teaching. We tread the trodden paths and do not seek for new fields of labor. The result is that the teaching market is so flooded, that the wages are very low. Thus, an educated lady, who is supposed to instruct four or five hours a day, and to be able to teach, beside the common School branches, three foreign languages (English, French, German), music, and mathematics, and who is, furthermore, supposed to make herself generally useful in the house—such a lady gets, as an average, about fifty dollars a year and board. A great step forward in the equalization of woman’s rights with those of men, was made when, in 1882, the university opened her gates for women; and the first student, Miss Cecilia Thoresen, entered with equal rights with men, to pursue any line of study and pass any of the examinations of the university. Until then the highest education had been reserved for men. Now the women got at least an opportunity to show, whether the old talk of their inferiority to men, was true or not. Since then twenty-four ladies have entered the university. Thus far none of them have finished the course. It remains to be seen if they, when this happens, will be appointed to those public offices to which the examinations they may have passed, ought to qualify them. As a result of this throwing open the university to women, most of the normal and high Schools leading to the university, were opened for girls, and great hopes for the future of the woman question, must be placed in this co-education of the Sexes. I am pleased to say we have imported this co-educational system from the United States. Mrs. Ragna Nielsen, a very bright lady, has the first mixed school in Christiania, and her work seems to thrive. With headquarters in Christiania, and branches all over the country, is an association for the furtherance of woman's rights; men, as well as women, are admissible as members, and the number grows rapidly. The object of this association is—through meetings, lectures, and since 1887 through a ---, 280 International Council of Women. semi-monthly paper, My/aende—to enlighten the public as to the true object of the woman question, and to discuss the best ways of furthering this ob- ject. The editor of this paper is Miss Gina Krog, a lady ranking among the first, of those who have espoused the cause of women in Norway. On the programme of this association is also woman suffrage, and one of its mem- bers, who is a member of the Storthing, has announced that he will propose for the legislature, a bill granting the suffrage to women under the same conditions as to men. Bills changing the constitution of the country must in Norway be proposed three years before they can be acted upon ; and, therefore, this bill can not come up earlier than at the next session of the Storthing. Although there is little hope of its being carried through, the issue, once raised, will at last be fought to victory. The chief object of the association, is to effect that radical change of opinion throughout the nation, that must necessarily be the forerunner of any change in law. Among the practical objects of our Women's Association, is to secure for married women the right to dispose of their own earnings and their own property. At present all property owned by either husband or wife is con- sidered owned by them both in common, but is wholly at the disposition of the husband alone, unless it has, before the marriage, been expressly agreed to by both parties, that each of them is to have the disposition of their own in- dividual property. A bill making this latter case the rule, and not the ex- ception, has for several years been before the legislature, but has as yet not been passed. - - I have said that the Norwegian women, as women everywhere else in the world, I believe, lack initiative faculty and originality. In one respect, however, they show more common sense than ladies of other countries that I have had the opportunity to see. There are few things more obstructing for women than the present custom of dressing. The last two or three years in Norway have produced a radical change in this respect. An originally American-Swedish book upon dress reform was some years ago introduced in Norway. The subject of dress was discussed at meetings and privately, and, as far as my experience goes, ladies have begun to reform, not only in their thinking about ways of dressing, but also in practical dressing. Certainly we have not been able to dispose of the petticoat, and will not be able to do so for a long time, I fear; but we reform our underclothing, and not only working women, but even society belles, try to do without the corset. This is to me a good sign, for, as Gerrit Smith says in his letter to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1857, ‘‘the relation between the dress and degradation of a woman, is as vital as between the uses of the inmate of the harem and the apparel and training provided for her.” We all know that woman can not reach full development, either physically or morally, until she arranges her dress in accordance with nature's demands. And as our great poet, Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson, has lately said, “If women only knew or would think seriously Social Purity. 281 what kind of ladies they are striving to imitate in their present costumes, would they maintain them?” Bjoernson here seems to indicate that the way of dressing has relation to the way of living, and, indeed, the question that at pres- ent attracts most attention, not only in Norway, but throughout Scandinavia, is that of social purity. No wonder, when we consider the wide bearing of this question, not only upon the present generation, but also upon all the future life of the people; also here the issue was raised by one of our poets, Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson, in his drama, “En Hanske ’’ (A Gauntlet), which was published in the year 1883. Here he answers the question, “Has a woman a right to expect the same purity in her future husband as he demands from her P’’ in the affirmative, and lets his heroine, Svava, refuse her lover and affianced husband, when she learns about his former life. He tries to persuade her that men's morality must not be judged by the same standard as that of women, and then she throws down to him the gauntlet. We have now two parties. Bjoernson, who is the leader of the largest and most powerful party, claims that marriage ought to be, as it now is, the only legalized form for men and women living together, but at the same time he wants it to be a real single marriage. He will that men be pure and restrain their passions in their youth, and when they marry they shall be faithful for life, to the chosen one. The other party, calling themselves the Bohemians, have, though small in number, made a great noise, and some of their leaders have set forth their views, in anything but an attractive and sympathetic man- ner. They claim, as far as I have been able to understand, that neither man nor woman ought to live an abstinent life, and as Social conditions prevent marrying at an early age, it would be better to live together with the girl they love, than for young men to go to the prostituted women, or for women to live a youth without love. It is not quite clear to me, and I do not think even to the leaders themselves, how their idea is to be carried out practically; but I really sympathize with the thought of a young couple living and work- ing together in their youth, especially if such a beginning could end in faithful love for life. For at present social conditions in our country, are not at all favorable for early marriages. Young men have to finish their studies, or in another way to prepare for a livelihood during so many weary years of their youth, that they may be twenty-five years or more before they are even able to support themselves. The American fashion of boarding, that seems so practical for young married couples of limited means, is un- known. Society demands that the husband shall bring his wife to a fully and nicely furnished home, with a servant girl to attend to the household duties. I confess those young homes, where the husband is absent all day, striving to earn the money necessary for housekeeping, and where the young wife, who may, before she married, have been earning her own living, has nothing to do except waiting for the baby that is to come, those homes leave a painful impression with me. And before the man marries, as the Bohe- 19 282 International Council of Women. mians say, he has led an impure life, because he could not live with the girl he loved, unless offering her such a sheltered home. However, I ought to say that some people think that the only principle of the Bohemians—and so might, perhaps, be the case with some of them—is to yield to any tempo- rary passion. We all agree that this obviously is an abominable principle. These same Bohemians claim that sexual abstinence is obnoxious as well for women as for men. Against this doctrine and against this party, Bjoernson has, for some months past, been waging a relentless war—lecturing all over the country. He con- tends that nobody was ever hurt by sexual abstinence, and his opinion is sus- tained by the medical faculty of the University of Christiania, who, in an open letter, have declared it their belief, that moral purity tends toward strengthening mind and body, and is of benefit for the physical and moral development. The great temptation to sin—the public houses of vice—have, I am glad to say, been closed in Christiania since February 15th, this year. Our organ- ization has for a long time tried to get prostitution abolished, and, with such a helper as Bjoernson, they have succeeded. This whole movement might seem a little peculiar in a country where public prostitution has never existed ; but to those who know the moral conditions all over Europe, it is no wonder that this question has been the all-absorbing topic throughout Scandinavia. However, according to my opinion, there has been too much talk about it of late. Love is not the only thing necessary to make people happy. And our Women's Association, in the paper it publishes, has in this fight very judiciously maintained the truth—that the first and most important thing for women is economic independence, in which all other independence roots. But who can tell in what time, this fact will be clear to all and when the work for independence will begin in earnest ? Women in Norway, as anywhere else, consider working a temporary life until they shall marry, and once married they, as anywhere else, abide by keeping their own houses. Of course the working class is excepted from this rule, but we other Nor- wegian women, I am sorry to say, are still far from aspiring to that inde- pendence that is reached by steady work in one direction. However, that we begin to understand the importance of this question is shown by the great interest lately taken in the Swedish author, Mrs. Edgreen’s “En Som- mersaga” (A Summer Tale). Mrs. Edgreen depicts that conflict that must necessarily arise in a marriage where the work for which the wife has edu- cated herself, and to which she has given up her life, does not agree with her becoming a mother and keeping house at that place, where the husband's business makes it necessary for him to live. It is this question that, accord- ing to my opinion, is the vital one in the whole women’s rights movement— the question how women, when they have been educated for an independent Social Purity. 283 position, shall be able to reconcile this position with their duties toward husbands and children, and what it is that has to be changed ; the present condition of companionship between man and woman, or the men and women within the limits of these conditions. Mrs. HARBERT. We will now have the pleasure of listening to a delegate from the National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Mrs. Clara Cleg- horne Hoffman. Mrs. HoFFMAN. Some learned savant has said that whatever of good we would have appear in the national life, must first be taught in the schools of the country, that it may become part and parcel of the coming citizen in the formative period of his life. The home teaching precedes the School, and parents teach, not only by precept and example, but by that subtle trans- mission and influence, giving the first germ of life a stamp before the child even sees the light of day; then, primary in this discussion, must be pre- natal influences in this question of social purity. In thousands of homes everything seems to be perfectly pure, perfectly moral, and the children are tenderly shielded from wrong, the boys and girls and their associates are tenderly cared for, and their reading carefully chosen, and yet, observation, as well as statistics, teaches us that hundreds go forth from these homes to swell the ranks of recognized prostitution, while thousands more go forth into the ranks of legalized prostitution under the perfectly respectable mantle of marriage. The fires of passion and lust lurk in those homes like the covered fires of Lucknow, only needing the occasion, only needing the temptation, to burst forth into flame, carrying death and destruction to every pure, and true, and lovely attribute of heart and soul. What was the trouble? Where was the failure? Surely, parents have failed in self-restraint, and this gratification, this indulgence of passion, has left its indelible impress upon the young life they have created. Everywhere in nature we see God’s beneficent law of procreation. We also see that the beasts of the field and the birds of the air, obey this law, and the results of instinct are higher and better than the results of reason, when overcome by passion. Yet reason is higher than instinct, as a man is higher than the brute creation. Until man and woman, consorting as husband and wife, to found the home, to bring to that home the Sweetness, and beauty, and grace and blessedness of childhood, shall have learned a wise, a humane, and a Christian self-restraint, we shall make slow progress in social purity. Self-restraint in marriage is more the exception than the rule. I only have to appeal to those that have had much to do with women, and much corre- spondence with them to ratify this, and this is true among the cultured and Christian. Few parents, even in these classes of cultured and Christian, are wise enough and chaste enough, to regard woman during the period of ges- tation as a being set apart to holy and sacred uses. Neither the mother nor 284 International Council of Women. the father of the young life that she is cherishing beneath her heart, is wise enough and chaste enough to decide that no passion shall touch, no breath of lust shall sully, the temple consecrated to that profound mystery, the gen- ceration and development of a new life. Mother love leads her to comprehend this profound mystery which is going won in her being, and this eternal law that must be fulfilled; and seeing that, : she begins to reach out after the best and the holiest, for the young life that has been invoked. Her soul is filled with better aspirations, though she be ignorant, though she be degraded, there come to her these holy question- ings that never were there before; and is it strange that she should say in the midst of all this, “the life that I am to bring forth into the world is the highest form of creation, and I, the mother of that highest form of creation, am not I worthy of the care and the consideration that is given to the finest breed of stock? Is not the child that I shall give into the world higher and nobler than calf or foal P” And yet such consideration is not shown, and my soul is hot with indignation when I think of the millions of pregnant women in the world, bowed down under the burdens of manual toil, and yet compelled to satisfy the demands of lust, intensified by drink and by tobacco. * * * What is the cure ? All remedies will be partial and disappointing until women stand, everywhere, on perfect equality with men ; until the church, and the law, and society, recognize marriage as a partnership in which she is one of the equal partners. Marriage I am talking about, not goods and chattels ; and until then this horror will go on, of lustful children brought into life, and a fresh crop again to perpetuate and intensify the cancer that is eating out the life of the nation. Then, and not until then, shall we be on the road to reform. * * * Then woman will honor and respect herself, and man will honor and cherish her, instead of loving and lusting after her. Then parents, pure themselves, will have no shame in teaching their children the wondrous mysteries of their own being, the marvelous functions of their beautiful bodies. Then they will not leave to servants, often degraded and ignorant, and to schoolmates and to evil books, the secrets most sacred in God's universe to be imparted to their children. Then children will be born who can say, “My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure.” Mrs. HARBERT. I present the following paper from Mrs. Lucinda B. Chandler, who is unable to be present: * MARRIAGE REFORM. Three measures to promote social purity and moral education are called for : mothers’ homes or mothergartens; special instruction of youth to fit them, so far as right knowledge and spiritual truth can do so, for parenthood; and universal kindergarten training. The mothergartens should give refuge to every woman and wife who, during gestation, needs the blessed influence of a real home, or deliverance from the so-called marital rights of our in- Social Purity. 285 iquitous legal marriage system. Here the mother should be helped in every manner to live for the benefit of the foetal organism, which the divine power will make with tendencies upward and good, if the mother co-operates by aspiration and earnest desire, when obstructions are removed. It is the riot of carnalism, which the license of marriage claims to sanctify, that perpetuates the lustful, selfish propensities in force and fury, inten- sifies the downward revolution of the life, toward the animal, and cre- ates the perversity that is so much more degraded than the animal. No lan- guage can properly designate it. Woman’s era implies and involves a re- form of the relations of man and woman, as conjugal partners and as parents. In this reform lies the possibility of eliminating the shocking barbarities by which civilization is disgraced. Man's legal institution of marriage was based upon the idea that woman's office in social economy is chiefly that of child-bearer. Laws were made requiring the husband to provide for his own children, and to protect him from the possibility of becoming responsible for the support of those of another man. Man-made laws have placed the control of the person of the wife in his discretion, like any other property. Church and State have combined to deprive womanhood of its sanctity in wifehood, and to rob the mother both of her natural right to choose its ex- ercise and to legally possess the child she has borne. Woman as well as man must eliminate from marriage the features of pros- titution, for when prostitution ceases inside of marriage it will disappear outside. The repeal of the law of coverture, leaving the wife free to main- tain her self-respect and to determine the exercise of her function of ma- ternity, will confer the greatest service legislation can render. We have the important lesson to learn that purity, moral advancement, and the higher humanity, can not be evolved by statute. The key-note of the new dispen- sation is spiritual truth. Man is a soul force, capable of becoming an agency of divine power, not chiefly an animal organism endowed with intelligence. How shall woman be educated to know she has the right to control her own person P. By listening to the voice of her own soul, setting aside every inbred idea that has come down from male theology and statute. Man is no more qualified to teach woman, in regard to the requirements of her being, as the mother of the race, as race builder, than he is to fulfill the function of maternity. Ask the truth in your own soul fervently, and dare to obey its light. “They who sow to the flesh shall, of the flesh, reap cor- ruption.” A ceremony and a legal permit do not change the procedure of that law. Read a lesson, too, from the animal kingdom, and see what the unerringness of instinct illustrates. And is the mother of men rightly a slave when no female below her is so degraded ? Study the evidences scat- tered thickly in the history of motherhood showing how mighty is the influ- ence on pre-natal life of the mental and emotional force of the mother. Power is the measure of responsibility. * * * 286 International Council of Women. A resolution was adopted to send cablegrams of greeting to Mrs. Priscilla Bright McClaren, Mrs. Elmy, Mrs. Jacob Bright, Mrs. Josephine E. Butler, to Queen Victoria, to the Empress of Germany, and to the Crown Princess of Denmark. Mrs. HARBERT. It is now my pleasure to present Miss Willard, who will give us the benediction upon the subject that is before us. Miss ANTHONY. There has been a bill presented by Miss Willard, asking Congress to pass a law to raise the age of consent to eighteen years in the District of Columbia and the Territories, and the members of Congress ask that this petition be signed, first by the officers and then by as many members of this Council as possible. It will be in room 41 in the Riggs House during to-day and to-morrow, and I hope every woman present will call and sign this petition. Miss WILLARD. I trust you will all feel there is an absolute obligation laid upon you as the result of what has passed through your brain and heart this morning, to put your names to this petition. It has been circulated from one end of this country to the other, and, notwithstanding a large majority of us who are present, have not put our names upon it yet, let us remember that it is a most important petition. Now, in closing this magnificent meeting, a poor little Protestant nun comes before you, and feels that she hasn’t much right to talk to you at all ; feels that the high and solemn mysteries, that have been spoken of in such varied tone and manner to-day, are those that she ought not to try to deal with ; feels more than ever, the inadequacy of one whose life has been apart, to try to speak of these things. All the time these ladies have spoken so bravely, or so tenderly, on this historic morning, my thoughts have been at work. I have seemed to see those two who went forth hand in hand from Eden on the saddest of all mornings, after the fall, and I have said in my heart, Oh, if those clasped hands had never parted company, our poor world had been to-day the place God wants to see it, and the place that Christ came to make it. I have said in my heart, would that the other half of the audience were here. This is only half the circle ; we ought to have had it builded out and had the others here. So I have only to offer you the thought, that every objection that has been brought forward, every philosoph- ical statement that has been made, is based upon, that out of the aggrega- tion of men by themselves, always comes harm; out of the coming of men and women into true, and noble, and high conditions, side by side, always comes good. Where is it that you have this curse most deeply rooted and most apologized for, by men P. In the camps of the soldiery. What would woman's coming forward into that life tend to bring about P. The reign of peace. The mother heart that can not be legislated in and can not be legislated out would say: “I will not give my sons to be butchered in great battles,” and we would have arbitration. Social Purity. 287 My noble friend, who spoke so bravely, Mrs. Hoffman, said: “I call mar- riage a contract, because I don’t think of just the word I mean ; and I do not mean a contract as to goods and chattels. Until woman has complete industrial freedom, marriage is an industrial contract; until woman has the purse jointly in her hand, marriage will never be the thing we want to see it.” . This question resolves itself into all the magnificent enterprises represented by these women who stand on this platform, while doubtless you who are here in the audience, stand just as true in your own circles. So that my heart is full of hope, and, out of the long savagery, and darkness, and crime, I see you coming up amid the brightness and the beauty of a new civili- zation. I see that the noblest men of the world's noblest race, the men of the Anglo-Saxon, who made this audience possible; the men who have thus striven and worked side by side with us, to bring about these great conditions, shall place upon woman's brow the crown of Minerva, and lead us forward to help them make a new government, so I speak to you the words of hope. There is nothing on this earth that I tried more earnestly to instill into my girls' hearts, when I was teaching, than a Superior, womanly self-respect. I doubt if we have it as the women of the future will, or as we ought to have it ourselves. Why, I pass signs in the street; I pass exhibitions of women in the cigar stores and saloons that, if we were as self-respectful as we ought to be, couldn’t stay there over night; I see beautiful women in beautiful robes walking on the streets, or hear of them in fine social surroundings, with a man at their side, puffing tobacco-smoke into their faces and eyes ; and I say that is a survival of past savagery, and debasement, and immolation of woman. If there is anything on earth I covet that pertains to men it is their self-respect. No man would be seen with a woman with the faintest tint or tinge of tobacco about her ; no man would allow himself to enter into mar- riage with a woman of known habits of drinking or impurity ; it isn’t think- able. When I see women coming out before men, or when I know they do— I do not see them, they are not women with whom I am socially acquainted— revealing the sacredness of the pure symbol and badge of their womanly nature, coming out so that the joke, and jest, and jibe, are uttered in the ante- room, where young men Smoke cigars and hob-nob together, I Say I could weep my life out that a woman thus appears, thus decked, thus dressed, bor- rowing that style from women the hem of whose garments she would be ashamed to touch Let us have self-respect. Let us be clothed with a raiment of purity that ought to guard the virgin, the mother, and the wife. When we assemble socially and allow scenes to be put before us that are indecorous and shameful, we have passed from the purity and Self- respect that must and shall characterize the woman of the future. Oh, friends, these things are so deep in my heart | Girls come and ask me, “Would you dance round dances?” “Oh, my sister, my dear little sister, 28S International Council of Women. no ; don’t dance a round dance.” The woman of the future will not do it. I walked the aisles of the picture galleries of Europe. I saw the men in those great historic paintings, with their ear-rings and their fingers covered with rings, bedecked with ruffles, and dressed in all the hues that the peacock and rainbow could supply. That was the time when King Louis XIV. said: “The State, it is I.” They were nothing but a parcel of courtiers. When a woman shall be able to say to the State, “I am part of you just as much as anything that breathes; ” when she shall say, “I am part of society, I am part of the industrial value, I am part of everything that a man values; everything that a man’s brain loves to think about in philosophy, in philanthropy, or history, or science, I think about it in the same lines,” then the calm equi- poise shall come ; and for that I would like to live; for that I would like to speak. Persons who know more about it than I tell me that women who give their lives to shame, women who are on the street-corners with their in- vitations at night, are women who have, from the very look of the face and configuration of the head, the symbols and emblems of no self-respect. The Superior, queenly woman is the one that has the most self-respect, and sees its application to everything around her, and makes every man feel that he would as soon die, as offer her an insult. The brothers of women— the Arabs love to say of a pure man that he is a brother of girls—the brotherly men will come forward to meet and respond to the sisterly women. When we are not toys, when we are not dolls but duchesses, when we stand before them royal, crowned with heart of love and brain of fire, then shall come the new day. I ignore nothing that has been said. I am in hearty sympathy with all. But, in my own thought, this has come as the key-note that must be struck. God grant that we may be so loving and so gentle in it all, that there shall be no vanity, no pride, for the grandest natures are the humblest. Let me speak a word of hope. I have heard this statement from a woman who has come from Germany, a woman for years a student in the universi- ties. She says the professors' wives tell her that the new science has devel- oped this thought, and that professors are saying to their young men: “If you want a scintillating brain, if you want magnificent power of imagination, conserve every force, be as chaste as your sister is, and put your power into that brain that throbs like an untired engine.” < * * I do not know how you feel, but I want to take this woman by the hand, this sweet-faced and sweet-voiced English woman, who, last night when all of us were asleep, went out into the holiness of the moonlight and saw that our capital was not so bad as London ; this woman who went to see the little girl that hadn’t been taught and hadn’t been helped, and came from her country home and was getting entangled in the meshes of that great Babylon. God bless you, Mrs. Chant, you are welcome to America. I thought, while you were speak- Social Purity. 289 ing, of what our Whittier said of the countries “Unknown to other rivalries than of the mild humanities and gracious interchange of good— “While met beneath protecting flags we closer stand— The eagle of our native crags, the lion of our mother land.” We women are clasping hands. You do not know how much it means. I have sought this woman from over the water. I wanted her to come over here with her large experience in the work. I have not seen so many sor- rowful girls, and don’t know how to reach them, only in a general way; and I have asked her if she will stay and teach us, and she says she will stay in America, if we want her. Are you not glad P So understand that the Na- tional Woman's Christian Temperance Union is going to keep Mrs. Chant here and send her about with her sweet evangelism. Now I think, dear friends, that we have certainly this morning boxed the compass of this won- derful thought. The following letters to the Council refer directly to the sub- ject of this session: THE YORK BRANCH of THE LADIEs’ NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ABOLITION OF GOVERNMENT REGULATION OF WICE. To Mrs. E. C. Stanton, Washington, President of the International Council of Women : MADAM : We, the committee of the above association, rejoice in the event of the assembling of your great International Convention. We send you our hearty greet- ing, and desire to express our earnest interest and sympathy. May your counsels promote largely the noble idea of an universal sisterhood of women, binding hearts together, the world over, in one common effort to elevate our womanhood. May the interchange of opinions on the great questions which come before you for consideration, arouse new desires, promote fresh efforts, and lead to devising effective methods toward enabling women to occupy their right and proper places, side by side with men in the affairs of the home, the church, and the State. We crave that you may be rightly guided in all your decisions. May the blessing of Almighty God rest upon your assembly. We are your sisters. Signed on behalf of the above section of the Social Purity Organizations, LUCRETIA. H. KENDALL CLARK, 9 Feversham Terrace, York. MARY G. BARRON, Hon. Treasurer. MARIA RICHARDSON, Hon. Secretary, Cherry Hill House, York. YORK, March 12, 1888. NATIONAL VIGILANCE ASSOCIATION, - - 267 STRAND, LONDON, W. C., March, 1888. To the Women’s Congress, Washington, U. S. A. - LADIES: The National Vigilance Association desire to offer you their congratula- tions on the important Congress which you have this year assembled. They recog- nize the teaching of history that the position of Women is the touchstone of civili- zation, and trust the outcome of your labors will be to give great impulse to the many movements for the elevation of women, on both sides of the Atlantic. 290 International Council of Women. This association was formed nearly three years ago, and has for its principal object the protection of the virtue of young girls from force and fraud. It also suppresses houses of ill-fame, checks the fraudulent export and import of girls, watches reg- istry offices and generally gives gratuitous advice and assistance to all comers within the scope of its objects. The work of its Organizing, Legal, Parliamentary, Rescue and Preventive, Literature, Foreign Traffic, and Finance Sub-Committees, needs no detailing here. Such being its general scope, the association commends its work to the attention of the Congress as one specially engaging to women. It seeks the relief of large numbers of young women from a practical slavery, into which they are betrayed by persons who take shameful advantage of their inexperience, and only too often use an actual force worthy only of Savage and barbarous countries. In particular, the Rescue and Preventive, and the Foreign Traffic Sub-Committees of the Association desire to bring before the Congress several special topics on which interchange of thought and concerted action between American and English socie- ties seem desirable, and with that view submit separate memoranda which are appended. Signed on behalf of the National Vigilance Association, PERCY WILLIAM BUNTING, Chairman of Evecutive Committee. NATIONAL VIGILANCE ASSOCIATION. We desire to express our warm sympathy with the members of the Women's International Council, about to meet in Washington, in their various and earnest efforts to promote the amelioration of the condition of women. We feel that by intercommunication of the two nations, much mutual assistance can be given. For some time past we have been seriously considering the condition of children in theaters, pantomimes, and music halls. We are informed that English children are every year taken to America and other countries, in traveling companies, to per- form in the great towns, and that their moral surroundings are fraught with the gravest peril. We understand that it is contrary to the law of the United States that children of very tender years, should be thus employed. But owing to the short time that the companies remain in each locality, and to the cumbrous nature of legal institutions, these companies have made their harvest and are off, before any proceedings can be taken. We should be glad to rouse the attention of the Council to this subject. - We believe that already much care is taken by the emigration authorities as to the safety of girls arriving at the ports, but that there is still a large amount of leakage. This, perhaps, is not wholly avoidable, but still we think that too much care can not be taken, to ensure that these newly-arriving emigrants, who might be so profitable as servants, and in other capacities, to those in whose country they come to reside, should not, on first coming, fall into such evil hands as shall make them forever afterward worthless to society, and probably a heavy pecuniary bur- den on it. The case of Mormon girls and women is a serious one. They go over, unobserved, from our country as ordinary emigrants, but are really in the hands of those who, under various pretexts, get them away to Utah. Some inquiry having been made on the arrival of suspected parties in New York, we understand they now go by another route, so that detection is difficult. We should be glad to know if there is any aim in the various States to raise to uniformity the age of protection of young girls. We understand that it ranges from Social Purity. 291 twelve to twenty-one in the different States. We should like to know the opinion of the Congress as to the age to which it should be raised. Wein England are anxious that it should be raised to at least eighteen. By our act of 1885 it was raised to six- teen. We should like to know what regulations are in force in the United States, as to the provision of female police officers for the supervision of the women arrested and temporarily confined in police cells. At present in this country, although no male warders, etc., are allowed on the female side of our prisons, no similar precaution is observed in police cells, where men only are employed. We are endeavoring to get this altered, and we should be very glad to be in possession of the experience of other countries on the subject. - Finally, we should be glad to know the views of the Council on the question of the occupation of girls rescued from a life of vice; what their opinion is as to homes, and the length of time to be spent there; also, whether they think the greater free- dom of girls in all classes in America tends to a higher tone of morality or to its relaxation. Signed on behalf of the Preventive and Rescue Sub-Committee, MILLICENT GARRET FAWCETT. ANNETTE BEAR. NATIONAL VIGILANCE ASSOCIATION. The Foreign Traffic Sub-Committee is using its best powers to prevent young women being induced by fraud to go abroad into houses of ill-fame, or into occupa- tions of evil character, or which would lead to their ruin. The main labors of this committee have been directed to the continent of Europe, but they take this opportunity of laying before the women of America this important matter, and of asking whether they will co-operate with this Association, in securing proper super- vision in immigrant vessels on the ocean, and in preventing those who trade in the vice of others in the United States, either from importing women by fraud from abroad, or in getting hold of them at the immigration depots in New York and elsewhere. Signed on behalf of the committee for the Suppression of Foreign Traffic, ELIZABETH. S. LIDGETT. The session closed with the singing of “America.” FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 1888. EVENING SESSION. P O L I T I C A L C O N D IT I O N S . Miss Anthony presiding. Invocation by the Rev. Amanda Deyo. Miss ANTHONy. I have now the pleasure of introducing Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker, of Connecticut. THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS OF WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. Mrs. HOOKER. In the month of August, 1774, that eminent statesman and true patriot, Thomas Jefferson, in a little tract entitled “A Summary View of the Rights of British America,” used certain words, which I will take for my text. “The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.” And again : “The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but can not disjoin, them.” I ask your patient attention while I attempt to show, first, that under a proper interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, which he had so large a part in preparing, women have a right to vote—to- day, now, this moment—on precisely the same terms with men ; and, sec- ondly, that they ought, for various reasons, to exercise this right without molestation, and men ought to help them to do so by every means in their power. In the Constitution of the United States there is not a line nor a word for- bidding women to vote, but, properly interpreted by the Declaration of Inde- pendence and the assertions of the fathers, it actually guarantees to women the right to vote in all elections, both State and national. The preamble to the Constitution is the key to what follows—it is the concrete statement of the great principles which subsequent articles express in detail. It says: “We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and Secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Women are “people '' Surely, and desire, as much as men to say the least, to establish justice and to insure domestic tran- quillity; and, brothers, you will never insure domestic tranquillity in the days to come, unless you allow women to vote who pay taxes and bear equally with yourselves all the burdens of society, for they do not mean any longer to endure patiently and quietly such injustice, and the Sooner men understand this and graciously submit to become the political equals of their mothers, Political Conditions. 293 wives, and daughters—aye, of their grandmothers, for that is my category— instead of their political masters, as they now are, the Sooner will this precious domestic tranquillity be insured. Women were surely “people’’ when these words were written, and were as anxious as men to establish justice and promote the general welfare, and no one will have the hardihood to deny that our fore- mothers did their full share in the work of establishing justice, providing for the common defense, and promoting the general welfare in all those early days. When liberties had to be gained by the sword and protected by the sword, men necessarily came to the front and seemed to be the only defenders of these liberties; hence all the way down, women have been content to do their patriotic work silently and through men, who are the fighters by nature; but now, at last, when it is established that ballots instead of bullets are to rule the world, it is high time that women ceased to attempt to establish justice, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity, through the votes of men, because they can not control these votes and turn them to high moral uses in government. The Constitution, which became the law of the land in 1789, embraced in its provisions women as well as men, and the word “people,” so frequently used, always included them. This is true of the four articles which I will consider, and of every other article in the Constitution, where the word ... people is used. Article I of the amendments is: “The right of the people to peaceably assemble and petition for a redress of grievances,” etc. No one doubts that women have that right equally with men ; in fact, it is about the only political right that is cheerfully accorded to us to-day, because it is so easy to get rid of us and silence us in that way. For years and years women have been petitioning Congress and the State legislatures to take down the political bars which men have put up, contrary to the whole spirit of our Government, and allow them to become active co-workers in pro- moting the general welfare ; but the reply has been, “leave to withdraw,” or its equivalent, simply because these petitioners had no power to cut off the heads of these Congressmen and Assemblymen, their political heads, I mean, because we do not believe in bloodshed of any sort. So long ago as 1871, I got an order from a Senator to Search the Secretary’s office for peti- tions then on file, and the clerk found the names of 20, ooo women slumber- ing in the dusty pigeon-holes in his office, and the honorable gentleman, who asked me with a smile of contempt, “How many women really wanted to vote P” was surprised at the record, which was not a tenth part of the number that had been wearily petitioning our legislative bodies year after year since 1848. A. Article II, with its provisions for “the right of the people to keep and bear arms,” etc., which right women assuredly have equally with men, and which, unless some new protective element is brought into society, women will be compelled to use in self-defense ; for the crimes against woman in her very -- 294 International Council of Women. - womanhood, are becoming unendurably frequent all over our land. The one protective element is the ballot in her own hands, since it is already in the hands of the ruffians who make night hideous, and who virtually close the thoroughfares of our cities and villages, even to honest women, the moment the sun has gone down. Have you ever thought of it, gentle- men P You who are opposed to woman's use of the ballot, that among her so-called protectors, who are to use her ballot for her, are these very men for whom we build our jails and penitentiaries, taxing the women to do it, and that every election day sees paupers and vagrants taken from the work- houses, to elect the men who are to make and administer the laws for all women P Article IV provides for the right of “the people to be secure against unrea- sonable searches and seizures,” etc. Women surely need to be thus secured. And Article IX provides that the “enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny others retained by the people.” Is it not perfectly clear that all these are the rights of women equally with men, and that the term “people” as here used, was intended to embrace both P Thus, then, the preamble and the Constitution, under which our Govern- ment was formed and began its work of protective legislation, plainly em- braced women in all their provisions, and when the preamble declares that the object of all was “to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,” it surely did not mean to secure these blessings of liberty to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people, women as well as men. And note again the word “secure” in this pream- ble, which is scarcely less important than the word “people.” “Secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity”—not give, but secure the blessings of liberty, to those who already had the right to them from God, and who were coming together for purposes of defense, as against an outside world that still insisted that liberty was not the right of the many, but of the few, who might be able to overthrow this right of individuals to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness unless they combined together to secure it. And this is where the Declaration of Independence comes in as an inter- preter of the Constitution, and it utters no uncertain voice on this question as to who are the people meant in the preamble and articles following. It says: “We hold these truths to be self-evident'' (mark that self-evident; that is, that they require no proof); “that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights” (here again is the word “secure,” not give, grant, or bestow) “governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” (not from the consent of half the governed— the consent of the male half—but the governed), and that “whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the Political Conditions. 295 people to alter or abolish it, and institute a new government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” That is to say, the fathers, in Congress assembled in Philadelphia on the 4th of July, 1776, proclaimed over the whole earth, that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that taxation without repre- sentation is tyranny, and for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, they mutually pledged to each other their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor ; and yet we are told to-day that the women of these States have no right to vote until the men, who alone have been in the habit of voting, shall make some new and special laws to meet their case ; in other words, till men shall give and grant women a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—a right to promote the general welfare—a right to establish justice and secure the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity. Now, friends, do you wonder that it makes my blood boil, to hear from the lips of mere boys the assertion that they and their sex alone, have the right to make and exe- cute the laws that I and my daughters are to live under ; that they are born to rule, and we born to obey P You tell me that I must submit to conditions before I can vote; I, who am a free-born citizen of the United States, while you admit the igno- rant foreigner, if a man, to the full privileges and responsibilities of citizenship. I defy this assumption of power on the part of men of this country. I declare to you, as did the apostle Paul: “I am free-born.” “With a great price obtained I this freedom,” said the Roman centurion to this old patriot apostle, but he replied, “I am free-born.” Ah, friends, there is music in these words, to my ear. They are the deep vibrations of a soul that loves its country as itself, and there are tens of thousands of women to-day ready to pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, to the maintenance of their rights as free-born citizens of this republic, and who will never willingly consent to such desecration of Constitutions, State or national, as would be caused by the addition of special articles pro- viding for the right of women to vote. Such articles would virtually read thus : “All men are created equal ; all women are also created equal, not only to each other, but to men; all men may peaceably assemble and petition for redress of grievances, may keep and bear arms, may be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures, may retain to themselves all rights not enumerated in the Constitution, and all women may assemble,” etc., etc. As well may theologians interpret “Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them,” to mean literally men, and therefore demand a new scripture specially to include women in these and the like injunctions, “He that believeth shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be condemned,” “No man can serve two masters,” “A good * 296 International Council of Women. man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth good things,” etc. No, friends, the truth is precedent, and prejudice, custom, and conservatism are the only barriers against women in government to-day. Constitutions are all right when properly interpreted. The one article of the national Constitution which, it is claimed, for- bids women to vote, in fact guarantees to women the right to vote for members of Congress, rather than forbids it, and not only so, but it act- ually calls upon the General Government to interfere with the State gov- ernments, if necessary, for the purpose of protecting women in the exercise of this right. Article I, section 2, says: “The House of Representatives shall be chosen every second year by the people of the several States, and the electors of each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislature.” Here you have in full the only paragraph in the United States Constitution that can be tor- tured by our adversaries, to exclude women from voting for United States officers. I speak advisedly when I say “adversaries,’’ for, friends, it is no pleasant task, this work of going up and down the length and breadth of the land, proclaiming that women are free, and ought to exercise their freedom under a sense of responsibility by the conscientious use of the ballot, the only token of political responsibility, and the men who keep up these laws of precedent and shut us off from the expression of our will in matters of government are the worst kind of adversaries. They compel us to most un- welcome duty, and to penalties of whose sting they have but little concep- tion. Some of us know to-day of fire and fagot in our hearts, whose burn- ing makes deeper scars than the martyr fires of old, and were it not for faith in God, we should have given up the contest long ago. Here, then, you have, I Say, the only argument against the right of women to vote, contained in the Constitution of the United States, and, briefly stated, it is this: The latter clause says that electors for members of Con- gress must have the same qualifications as electors for members of the State legislature, and the constitution of Connecticut, for instance, declares in Article VI, section 2, that “Every white male citizen of the United States, who shall have attained the age of twenty-one years, and resided in this State one year and in the town six months, and shall be able to read any article of the Constitution, shall, on his taking such oath as may be prescribed by law, be an elector of the State.” Now, say objectors, women are not white male citizens of the United States, and, as these are the only ones that may choose members of the legislature, these are the only ones who may choose mem- bers of Congress. To which I reply, first, that, by the Fourteenth Amend- ment to the Constitution of the United States, the word white was expressly, and the word male virtually, blotted out from all our State constitutions, and in Connecticut black men, under that amendment, were allowed to vote for years before the word “white” was expunged from its constitution ; and, Political Conditions. 297 second, that the first clause of this Article II, section 2, which says that the House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen by the people, denies to every State the right to make any qualification for State electors that shall interfere with the predominating right of the whole people to elect their members of Congress. It is as if the United States Constitution had said: “The right of trial by jury shall be secured to all the people of the United States;” and Con- necticut had said in her constitution : “Every white male citizen shall be entitled to a trial by jury.” Plainly such an article of a State constitution would be pronounced null and void, and the only reason the other has not been so pronounced long ago, is that in the beginning, men alone thought of voting, wished to vote, did vote; and so the authors of the State constitu- tions, in defining who should be electors, naturally and as a matter of exact- ness, and without any thought of women, said: “All white male citizens’’ with such and such qualifications may vote. And the case is all the stronger for women than for black men, because the enslavement and disfranchise- ment of black men was contemplated, reluctantly, it is true, but nevertheless contemplated and recognized by the national Constitution, while the dis- franchisement of women was not thought of or considered. This is so true that women did actually vote in a few instances in the earlier days, and they only ceased to do so, because they did not appreciate its importance, or, as in New Jersey, because that State, in direct violation of the Constitution of the United States, as I think, specially disfranchised the women of the State. And to those who may not be ready to admit that the national Constitu- tion secures to women the right to vote in all cases equally with men, there is this special and decisive argument with regard to their right to vote for members of Congress. The Constitution, as we have seen, gives the right to the people of the State, with only this limitation—that the electors for members of Congress shall have the qualifications requisite for electors for the most numerous branch of the State legislature. The right is absolute, except that the State may fix the “qualifications.” Now, what is a qualifi- cation ? Sex is not one. A qualification is something that may be acquired, as a certain age, a certain time of residence, ability to read, etc. A certain | height of stature could not be, a certain color of the eyes could not be. Nothing natural and unchangeable could be. So sex can not be. The State, therefore, in making sex a disqualification has attempted that which it had no power to do, and its action is, so far, void. If, then, as is claimed, the United States may step in and punish a citizen of the United States for voting illegally for members of Congress, as in the case of Susan B. Anthony, because the State had limited the voting privilege to male citizens, Surely the United States may much more be called upon to step in and protect the right of all the people of every State, to become electors of members of Congress, including the women people as well as the 20 298 International Council of Women. º men people. Do you not see it, friends P Members of the House of Rep- resentatives shall be chosen by the “people of the several States,” and yet when one of these people—being an honest, law-abiding, tax-paying woman, after consulting the best lawyer in her city, and being duly registered and sworn in as an elector—puts her ballot in the box for a member of Congress, the United States Government, by marshal and commissioner, seizes her, and, by a judge of the Supreme Court of the United States, condemns her to a fine and costs of prosecution, on the ground that the State of New York has a right to disfranchise half its citizens, they being guilty only of being women, and in the face of the express provision of this article that the people of every State shall elect the members of Congress of that State. And I may as well finish what I have to say of Miss Anthony’s trial just here, because Judge Hunt's decision against her, was based partly on this very article, and it is time that his interpretation of it and the consequences thereof were fully made known. Judge Hunt decided that the right of voting is a “right or privilege aris- ing under the constitution of the State, and not of the United States,” and this in the face of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, ratified by three-fourths of the States, and thereby made as much the law of the land as any other part of the United States Constitution. The Fourteenth reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law.” This amendment was supposed to cover the whole ground of enfran- chising the black men, made free by the Thirteenth Amendment, and it ought to have been sufficient. But the white men of the South were naturally averse to seeing black men just out of slavery the chief rulers of their States, they being recently disfranchised themselves for rebellion, and they made it so difficult for black men to vote that the Republican party, which was abso- lutely dependent upon their votes for continuance in power, determined to strengthen the right of black men to vote by another amendment, and so passed the Fifteenth Amendment, which reads: “ The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Congress shall have power to enforce this act by appropriate legislation.” Here we have the Constitution of the United States saying in plainest terms “ that all persons born in the United States and subject to the jurisdic- tion thereof are citizens, not only of the United States, but of the State wherein they reside ; and that the right of citizens to vote shall not be de- º Political Conditions. 299 nied by any State; and yet a judge of the Supreme Court of the United States, declares, from the bench that the citizen's right to vote comes from the State alone, and hence that a State may disfranchise any of its citizens except black men, these alone being protected from disfranchisement by the latter clause of the Fifteenth Amendment, ‘‘ on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Thus, you perceive, a majority of present voters in any State may disfranchise every other voter who has gray hair or blue eyes, or any physical peculiarity but a black skin ; may disfranchise all men over forty years of age, or all men worth less than $50,000, or all men of the temperance party, or the labor party, or the Republican or Democratic par- ties; in short, every one but themselves, the then majority of voters; and Judge Hunt accepted this conclusion and declared that this is the constitu- tional law of the United States, as interpreted by him in his capacity of judge of the Supreme Court of the United States. - w He did this because he was so imbued with the theory of State rights as against national rights, and so filled with prejudice against the rights of women in government, that he was determined to interpret these amendments in behalf of black men alone, although the wording of them leaves no room for question that they embrace all the people of the United States, accord- ing to the meaning and intent of that word “people,” in all the previous articles of the national Constitution. And yet this is but half, and the least criminal half, of his unjust decision in the case of Miss Anthony. Not content with misinterpreting the law of the United States by proclaiming, that the right to vote of every citizen but black citizens, was subject to loss at the pleasure of a bare majority of voters, he denied to her the right of trial by jury—that is, he decided the case himself, and caused the clerk of the court to record the verdict of guilty, without reference to the jury empaneled for the case, who had been sitting all through the trial to hear the case, and who alone were legally competent to bring in a verdict upon it. And when Miss Anthony's counsel asked leave to address the jury he was denied ; and when he asked that the jury be polled—that is, that each member might be asked by name if this was his verdict, he was again denied, and Judge Hunt then instructed the clerk to take the verdict, and the clerk said, in the usual form: “Gentlemen of the jury, hearken to the verdict as the court hath recorded it. You say you find the defendant guilty of the offense charged. So say you all.” - No response was made by the jury, either by word or sign. They had not consulted together in their seats or otherwise. None of them had spoken a word. Nor had they been asked whether they had or had not agreed upon a verdict. No juror spoke a word during the trial from the time they were impaneled to the time of the discharge, and as soon as the judge refused to poll the jury, he said: “Gentlemen of the jury, you are discharged,” and the jurors left the box, and one of them declared to a bystander that 300 International Council of Women. y “guilty” was not his verdict, neither was it the verdict of the other eleven. “Could I have spoken,” said he, “I should have answered ‘not guilty,’ and men in that jury-box would have sustained me.” It seems, friends, that he and the other jurors, had a right to speak and to demand that the verdict be submitted to the jury. But they did not understand their rights in this respect, and were naturally in awe of a judge of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the judge must have known that they would be awed, or he would not have dared thus to transgress the ordinary rules of law. And for this act he deserved impeachment, and had the accused been a foreign- born, though naturalized, citizen of the United States on trial for fraudulent voting, which is a criminal offense, you know, punishable by heavy fine and imprisonment, and had he been thus denied a verdict from the jury, the press would have rung out the injustice all over the land. And this simply because this man, being an acknowledged voter, would have had a political party be- hind him, whose interest it was to protect him and every other citizen, whether free-born or naturalized, in his right to vote. - Thus you see how in this right to vote, is wrapped up the great volume of our cherished rights. Judge Hunt began with denying to women their citi- zens' right to vote, and, by an easy step, passed on to denying that right regarded most sacred of all—the right of trial by jury. And the crime of Judge Hunt in refusing Miss Anthony her right of trial by jury was all the greater, because there was no appeal from his court to any higher one, as is customary in all our other courts. A circuit court judge may review his own decision, but there is no appeal from his final decision, and the judge refused even to reconsider the case, though strenuously urged to do so by Judge Selden, the counsel. And now permit me to give you briefly the argument of woman's right to vote in our State elections as well as national, in consequence of the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. It is simply this: Before the war, and reconstruction acts following it, the word “citizen” was not fully defined, some jurists con- tending that all persons owing allegiance to the Government and protected by it were properly citizens; and others, that only those who were accred- ited legal voters could properly be called citizens. Then, when the Repub- lican party desired to enfranchise the black men, partly for the sake of secur- ing their votes (I do not say that this was the sole motive) in the next Pres- idential election, it was not willing to deface the national Constitution by such words as these : “All black men, formerly slaves, are citizens of the United States ;” and, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of black men ;” and again, “The right of black citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by any State,” and, therefore, it was driven to the annunciation of a general principle of citizenship, applicable to all persons at all times, and this was Political Conditions. 301 the principle, that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” This is a grand assertion, in harmony, as I have already shown, with the spirit and letter of the whole Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence, and, like them, it embraced all women as well as all men, and secured to all women no less than all men, their right to vote. Mark the words “secure” and “right to vote.” Our claim is that the original Constitution gave no right to vote to any man or woman, but it simply secured to every man and woman his or her original, natural right to govern himself or herself, except so far as he or she should delegate this right to others, for purposes of civil life and national action. And these amendments, following the spirit of the Constitution in preamble and articles, declare that all persons are citizens, and that the citizen's right to vote shall not be abridged by any State. Can anything be plainer than that woman, being a “person,” is a citizen, and, being a cit- izen, has the citizen’s right to vote P Formerly each State had charge of its own elections and the United States had no right to interfere with them in any State, even though the election was for national officers, but in the eagerness of the Republican party to enforce the amendments which would bring black votes to their aid, they gave a new power to Congress in this section : “Congress shall have the power to enforce this article,” viz., “The right of citizens of the United States to vote without denial on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” And Congress passed what is called the Enforce- ment Act of 1870, which is entitled “An act to enforce the right of citi- zens of the United States to vote in the several States of the Union.” General terms, again, you perceive ; not an act to enforce the right of the black man to vote in the several States of the Union, but of all citizens of the United States. And the first eighteen clauses of the act are very minute in their provisions for the protection of these black men, whose votes were wanted ; and then, there was a nineteenth clause that was intended solely to hinder from voting, white rebel men who had been disfranchised during the war, and this clause reads thus: “If at any election for representative or delegate in Congress of the United States, any person shall vote without having a lawful right to vote, every such person shall be deemed guilty of a crime, and shall for such crime be liable to prosecution in any court of the United States of competent jurisdiction, and on conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine not exceeding $500, or by a term of imprisonment not exceeding three years, or both, in the discretion of the court, and shall pay the costs of prosecution.” And under this clause of the Enforcement Act of 1870, which was made expressly to punish white male rebel citizens for voting, after they had been disfranchised for rebellion, Judge Hunt condemned Susan B. Anthony for - 302 International Council of Women. the crime of voting “without having a lawful right to vote.” This woman, the blackest of black Republicans, who had, with others like herself, fur- nished Mr. Sumner with half his ammunition, in the shape of petitions from hundreds of thousands of citizens in behalf of the black man—names which it is an enormous task to collect, but without which all appeals to Congress to do justice would have been in vain—this woman, who had vio- lated the infamous fugitive slave law every time, by giving the cup of cold water to the panting fugitive and speeding him on his way to free soil in Canada—she, thank God of all women in this land, was selected by the Government of the United States to be prosecuted, dragged from one court to another, harassed during the space of nearly a year, tried at last in another city than her own and fined for the crime of voting for the President of the United States and a member of Congress, under an act entitled “An act to enforce the right of citizens of the United States to vote in the several States of this Union,” and under a clause of that act that made it a crime for a rebel to vote, because he had been deprived of his citizen's right to vote, by special act of Congress, in consequence of his crime of rebellion. And, friends, do you not know that no citizen can be lawfully disfran- chised, either by State or nation, except for crime or rebellion, and then only by the judgment of his peers ? But in this case of Miss Anthony, she was punished, not only as if she had been guilty of crime or rebellion, or both, but she was, so far as the unjust judgment of the court could do it, disfranchised for evermore, and that without the judgment of her peers in a double sense— for she was not only denied the verdict of the male jury sitting there on purpose to render their verdict, but a jury of her peers she could not have, nor can any woman, so long as women are denied the right to vote and to sit upon a jury. And in the case of Miss Anthony's jury, had they been allowed to render a verdict, it would have been a verdict not of her peers, but of her political superiors, and this would have been true of them, how- ever ignorant or uneducated they were; whether black men or white, drunk or sober, every man of them was her sovereign, with power not only to make but to administer the laws under which she is compelled to live. Do you ask, why recount this trial and so asperse the character of a learned and otherwise upright judge? I answer, because his decision has become a precedent, and on this account we have been compelled to relinquish tem- porarily, at least, our high vantage-ground of constitutional guarantees, and resort to the advocacy of an amendment to the national and State constitu- tions, measures alike dishonoring to the constitutions and to the womanhood of the country. - We believe, with a distinguished Senator from my own State, whom I have been proud to claim as a personal friend for many years, that “Our Govern- ment involves a great deal of labor for us. Liberty is a burden, not a release,” a French philosopher has said. If you want ease, appoint as good a Political Conditions. 303 king as you can find, give him good counsellors, and tell them to save you all trouble ; you will have ease; but if you desire real freedom, it means labor. The twelve million sovereigns of this country are bound each to know something of the responsibility that is constantly taught in caucus, town-meetings, etc. The caucus should be only a meeting of honest citizens to see what had best to be done.” And as there are thousands of women quite ready to assume this responsibility, of seeing what had best be done in the primary meetings of all the cities and villages of our land, and thousands more who will do it conscientiously, though reluctantly, when called to it by the invitation of their fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons, we desire, most earnestly, that the approaching second century of male legislation, should wit- ness a reversal of this unjust decision of Judge Hunt, and proclaim the free- dom and responsibility of all the citizens of these United States. Let our brothers, then, consecrate this opening century of constitutional government, by an act of justice that shall be a supreme one, and that shall make our national Constitution forever a charter of the highest human rights. I said in the beginning that women ought to exercise their constitutional right to vote, and men ought to help them to do so by every means in their power. And this for two reasons: (1.) Because questions of legislation are largely questions of morals, and men alone are incompetent to deal with the morals of a community, however wise they may be, and however honest in their desire to promote the general welfare. Education, secular and religious, temperance, chastity, police regulations, penal institutions and reformatories —who has more interest than women in all these questions, and more wisdom to bring to their solution ? (2.) There can be no true manhood nor true womanhood when men rule and women merely obey. Every mother in her home, every teacher in our public schools is at a discount to-day, because of her political subordination. Every boy knows this, and, consciously or un- consciously, acts accordingly. True political economy, which is only another name for the science of government, can never be taught until women are intelligent and responsible thinkers upon the subject, equally with men, and are able to carry out their convictions at the ballot-box. Hence, I repeat, it is the plain duty of every woman to desire to vote, and of every man to remove the obstacles in her way. I will only answer one objection. It is said, “We have too many voters already. It is unjust, to be sure, to exclude all women on this account, but we can not help it. Men will not consent to be disfranchised, so we must make amends for our mistake in inviting all men to vote, by forbidding all women.” This is too much like Charles Lamb, who, being reproved for going so late to his desk in the morning, said he made it up by going home early in the afternoon. But have we too many voters? In other words, is the doc- trine of the fathers of this republic an unsound one, that personal liberty and personal responsibility are the only foundations of integrity, whether in º 304 International Council of Women. the individual or the nation ? No, it is not unsound. It is just as true to-day as it was at Sinai and Plymouth Rock. “Thou shalt” and “we will '' reads the Decalogue and the covenant of that old-time Jewish people, and thus in spirit, speak the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence: it is a grand and wholesome doctrine, and one we can not afford to lose sight of for a moment. But those do lose sight of it, who say we have too many voters already. No, we have not too many. On the contrary, to take away this ballot, even from the ig- norant and perverse, is to invite discontent, social disturbances, and crime. The restraints and benedictions of this little white symbol are so silent, yet so genial, so atmospheric, so like the snowflakes that come down to guard the slumbering forces of the earth and prepare them for springing into bud, blos- som, and fruit in due season, that few recognize the divine alchemy, and many impatient souls are saying we are on the wrong path—the Old World was right-–the government of the few is safe: the wise, the rich, should rule : the ignorant, the poor, should serve. But God, sitting between the eterni- ties, has said otherwise, and we of this land are foreordained to prove his word just and true. And we will prove it, by inviting every new- comer to share our liberties so dearly bought, and our responsibilities now grown so heavy that the shoulders which bear them are staggering under their weight; that by the joys of freedom and the burdens of responsibility they, with us, may grow into the stature of perfect men, and our country realize at last the dreams of the great souls who, “appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of their intentions,” did “ordain and establish the Constitution for the United States of America”—the grandest charter of human rights that the world has yet conceived. Miss ANTHONY. I am happy to present to you Mrs. Judith Ellen Foster, of the law firm of “Foster and Foster,” Clinton, Iowa, who is not only an equal member of the firm, but also a very successful lawyer, I am glad to say. WOMEN IN POLITICS. Mrs. Fost ER. Woman is in politics, and the only unanswered question is, What relation shall she hold to politics and what will be the result of that relation with all it involves? Shall women appear in political life by mere accident of birth, as does Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland and Empress of India; or by marriage, as Victoria, Empress of Germany; or by royal favor and caprice, as did the “ladies of the court’’ in the days of im- perial France? Shall women labor to sustain the government, as do the Prim- rose Dames, and for governmental reform, as do the Women’s Liberal Asso- ciations of England, through organizations which do every sort of honest political work except to vote? Shall they hold the position of supplicants, as American women do who seek governmental protection for temperance, for education, for philanthropy, for industrial equality P Shall women seek Political Conditions. 305 to conserve every purpose of good government, by every means in their power, and still lack the one means of crystallizing their love into law, their labor into government P Or shall all political disabilities be removed from all women who possess constitutional qualifications to which all citizens may attain? Accepting the Declaration of Independence as containing the essential equities of civil government, and the Golden Rule as the standard of individual obligation, the logical conclusion is irresistible, that all political disabilities imposed upon women by constitutional and statutory law are in violation of nineteenth-century civilization. * * * In social, educational, and industrial emancipation, woman's present achievements have realized the largest expectations of enthusiasts. Her political enfranchisements shall bring like realizations. Mr. Parnell, that great Irish patriot, said, a few days ago, in the House of Commons, that England's attempted justice to Ireland in the settlement of the land question had always been too late. Men of America, we see the revolutions going on about us—revolutions social, industrial, political. The practical abnegation of self-government, and the duties of citizenship by the so-called better classes, the aggressiveness of capital, the distractions of labor, and the saloon in politics—these known and unknown forces are bringing a crisis in our national life, full of terrible peril to the Anglo-Saxon race; aye, to every race everywhere. We do not threaten revolution because we bear about with us this sense of injustice to ourselves and danger to the State. We have no Separate interests which can be taken out of and guarded apart from the country and the age we live in. Humanity is a unit in origin and destiny; our national life is a body of many members, and is affected by the health of every part. Gentlemen, we do not threaten. We have no inferest that can be taken out of the body politic and cared for by itself. We must share with you the evils of bad government as well as the blessings of good government. Somebody writing in a New York paper, of a magnificent address which had been presented in this city by that peerless orator, Frances E. Willard. said that she, in pleading for woman's ballot, seemed to forget that women must fight if they would vote. I wondered from whence that man came. I wondered if he thought his objection was an original one. I wondered what was the name he bore. For I remember—we all have remembered—during these last few weeks how our civilization differs from that of all the world. As we have waited—as we did wait—in the sick chamber of the great Emperor William, as we watched by his bedside, as we watched by his bier with the multitudes, as we thought of the life of the great man extending through the century from the days of Napoleon, when he was consecrated to his life by his mother, the great Queen Louise, consecrated out of the agony of her “soul, because Napoleon had so ruthlessly trampled on her kingdom, we see that the distinguishing feature of his reign was the dominance of 306 International Council of Women. military power. It was force, force, force. He held in his mighty grip a people who were subjects, not citizens. And we know that to-night, in Eu- rope, there are four millions of armed men who walk back and forth and who do military service; and we know that what they call a strong govern- ment, depends upon force of arms. And when we tell them about our system, as I did last Summer, and explained to them that we had less than 25, ooo men in our standing army; when I spoke of our great ter- ritory, of our Atlantic coast, of our Pacific coast, where the waters come in over the golden sand, they said: “But what would you do if anything should happen P’’ I said: “I am sure I don’t know what we would do; only I am sure nothing will happen.” Why, our weakness is our strength. But why; why are we safe? It is because of the dominance of moral power in this land of ours. It is because we everywhere have a standing army which would come to the rescue if any assault were made. We know the history of the wars of the past; we know the help that came from the forge, the farm, the plow, and the school-room; yes, and from the sacred desk, and we know it would come again, if need be ; but it shall never need be. Why? Because we have set up moral power here as against mere military power, and so I say to you to-night, dear friends, that the lady who presides over this meeting, who has for so many years stood at the head of this great movement, so I say to you that the lady who presides over the great temperance movement of this country, I say that these two women are a moral power in this nation, and are mightier than they would be if they led armies. Why? Because it is moral power that counts. * * * Miss ANTHONY. I now have the pleasure of introducing Mrs. Harriet H. Robinson, of Massachusetts, member of the Executive Committee of the National Woman Suffrage Association. POLITICAL PARTIES AND WOMAN SUFFRAGE. Mrs. Robinson. In discussing the question of political conditions I always feel, so far as women are concerned, that we have no story to tell, so little have we gained after these forty years of struggle. I do not wish to ignore the small rights which are allowed to women in some of the States and Ter- ritories, but I propose to discuss the question in a broader sense and speak of woman's status in the parties which represent the leading thought in American politics. We see before us to-day the two dominant parties pre- paring for the coming political campaign, and we hear a great deal about the “sovereignty of the people,’’ the “rights of the people,” and that the “American people will not tolerate class domination.” We read all this and it sounds well. We agree with it. But when we, the women, stop to think whose “rights '' are discussed ; who the people are whose “sover- * , eignty must be maintained;” who “will not tolerate class domination;” we say: “This does not mean us; for, though we are of the people, we have no sovereign rights ; we are women, therefore we must tolerate class domi- nation.” Political Conditions. 307 These political parties, when they meet in convention, pass high-sounding resolutions on all sorts of questions—tariff reform, the fisheries, an honest and just ballot, etc., but not one word to establish or even suggest that the political rights of one-half the citizens of the United States ought to be con- sidered. “We, the people,” these men call themselves, just as if there was not a woman in the land interested in what they say or understood what they were doing. But they go on ignoring us in their conventions and in their resolutions, just as much as they did before we had begun to vote at all, or were declared by the Supreme Court to be citizens. There was a time when the Republican party was called, and was, the party of freedom ; but since it no longer gives substantial aid to the leading reforms of the day it deserves that title no longer ; for a party, no more than a person, can live on what it has done, but must depend on what it is doing. It had the chance to keep its record bright in 1872, when it advo- cated woman suffrage; but it failed to seize it, went back on its principles, and thus its record as the party of reform, ended. It had done a great and noble work for human freedom, and here was another opportunity given it to continue its work. The woman-suffrage cause was waiting to be recog- nized, prepared, from the foundation of the world, to follow in logical sequence directly upon the emancipation of the black mari. Charles Sumner, in a letter to W. S. Robinson, “Warrington,” the well- known “Our Correspondent ’’ of the Springfield Republican (never before published), gives his idea of the duty of Republicans in securing the rights of all classes of citizens. He writes: “27TH APRIL, '71. “MY DEAR ROBINSON: Long before the war I insisted that our Constitution should be interpreted always for freedom, whereas it was interpreted always for slavery. Such interpretation would be according to reason, just rules, and the Declaration of Independence. And when slavery disappeared I insisted that the great impediment was removed, and that the new life was to begin. * * *. I was for the centrali- zation of liberty, the upholding of human rights. Logically and constitutionally it seems to me that the nation should be able to protect and secure these everywhere with uniform power, so that they shall be the same everywhere. This is my doc- trine. I mean to die by it. This interpretation is the great victory after the war. (Signed) ‘‘ CHARLES SUMNER.’’ If the Republican party, after 1872, had continued to advocate the eman- cipation of the women of the country, the equal rights of all American citi- zens—white women as well as black men, black women as well as black men—this would have been its “victory after the war.” If it had followed the teachings of its lost leader, this would have made it something more than the “G. O. P.” It would be the ever new, the ever-living party of liberty. But it is as much behind the times on questions of reform, woman's suf- frage, labor, prohibition, and tariff, as was the Democratic party of forty years ago on the anti-slavery question. It is hide-bound and can not move 308 International Council of Women. beyond a certain point, and is no longer strong enough to take on a new issue, or carry a reform principle. * * * - The Jeffersonian Democrats were a reform party, but the present Demo- cratic party has made no record for itself since the war, nor for some time before. What claim has the Prohibition party to the support of the suffragists? It is a well-known fact that women have helped this party, almost as much as they have the Republican party. In the years when there was no doubt as to the election of the Republican candidates, the prohibitory vote has been quite respectable. That is, those men vote for their own candidates when it is of no use; but when the time comes that they could, by voting their own ticket, show the great parties that they are a power to be both feared and respected, they make a stampede for the Republican camp. * * * The temperance women are learning that they can not trust a party that does not vote at all times for its own candidates, and are learning, that they must demand the ballot for themselves in order to secure legislation for the temperance cause ; that they need the full right of suffrage so that they can carry constitutional prohibition without the help of men, who can be fright- tened or persuaded into abandoning their own cause. Women will always have “leave to withdraw '' as long as they trust to men to do their voting for them. - And there is no more hope for women in the Henry George, or Labor parties; so soon as the test elections come, their constituents as inevitably rush back to their old Democratic camp. In speaking of the two dominant parties, I do not forget that there are individual members who believe in and work for the political emancipation of women, but they can not go outside of party lines. They are Repub- licans, Democrats—first, last, and always—and what there is left, after doing their duty as party men, they give to the suffrage cause. They try to help us, I know, and they make every effort to get resolutions into party plat- forms, but as yet they have no power to change the policy or make our reform an issue within party lines. The fact is, the woman's cause is always in the way of politicians. They seem to be afraid of it; afraid to meet such a great moral issue as they know it to be. It seems to them a sort of unknown quantity—a bête moir—or, like Tennyson’s “little speck in garnered fruit,” to be quietly removed before my lord eats his apple. And these politicians act as if they did not know which way to turn when the woman question is brought to their notice. They suggest every remedy but the right one. They shrink at the idea of giving to the women of the country the same rights which they themselves enjoy. It is claimed that they hesitate, because they will not know what to do with us, or how to manage such a large “element” (as they call us) entering into politics all at once. But do not fear, gentlemen We do not want you to do any- Political Conditions. 309 thing with us, nor yet try to manage us. Make us free—that is all we ask– and we will take care of ourselves | * * * - Since such is the attitude of political parties, what should be the position of women themselves in regard to them P Shall they be Republican, Demo- crat, Prohibitionist, Labor Party? For my own part, I say belong to none of them, for, until such time as I have the right to vote there is no legitimate place for me in any party. * * * Old conditions of society are passing away. Nations have been scat- tered, but God has gathered their fragments together, and here on Amer- ican soil is to be tried the experiment of self-government by and for the people. And whether it succeeds sooner or later, depends on the leaders, who hold in their hands the power to guide the people aright. * * * Miss ANTHON.Y. Mrs. Martha A. Everett, of Massachusetts, delegate of the School Suffrage Association, will now speak to us. SCHOOL SUFFRAGE IN MASSACHUSETTS. Mrs. EveRETT. I have felt ever since these meetings began as if it was a large Thanksgiving party, a real old-fashioned New England Thanksgiving, when all the children and grandchildren had been invited home and were having a glorious feast and good time with their parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins, and were telling what each had been doing in their days of separation. - Since 1874 no person in Massachusetts has been deemed ineligible, by rea son of sex, to serve upon a School committee. The legislature of 1879, passed an act relative to the right of women to vote for school committee. In order to exercise the right of voting, a woman must have paid a tax in the com- monwealth within two years, must have resided within the State one year, and in the city or town in which she proposes to vote, six months. The tax may have been paid by herself on demand of the assessors, or may have been paid by a parent, guardian, or trustee on her account. A woman who holds her receipted tax-bill must go with it to the registrar, who, after ascertaining that she has the proper qualifications of age, residence, and education, must put her name on the list of qualified voters. Being once registered, she is not obliged to register again as long as these conditions remain unchanged. If a woman has not already paid a tax, she must take measures to do so if she wishes to vote. For this purpose, she must apply in writing to the assessors of her city or town, on or before the first day of October, express- ing her wish to be assessed for her poll, and give a list of her estate—real and personal—which is not exempt from taxation. She will then be assessed for her poll, not exceeding fifty cents, and for her estate she must then pay her tax and register as other women do who have paid taxes. Women who have thus paid taxes and registered have a right to vote for members of the school committee in Massachusetts. This does not give us the whole loaf, but as our brothers only offer a slice, we accept rather than to go without a crumb. 310 International Council of Women. At a meeting of registered women held in the city of Boston in 1880, a com- mittee was appointed, with Miss Abby W. May as president, to take charge of school suffrage throughout the State. The plan of work adopted was to appoint for each county in the State one or more resident managers, who shall stimulate and urge the women to take an active and intelligent interest in the schools and use their right of suffrage to secure good boards of government for them. The result would be that the associate man- agers will become thoroughly acquainted with the condition of school affairs in every town and village in the State. They will keep the central com- mittee in Boston fully informed of affairs in their respective counties. This work has been undertaken with zeal, and the best spirit in many places. The interest manifested by women in nominations for members of School boards, has often been the means of defeating men unfit for the place. The foundation principle of the work is “the best interests of the schools.” The responsibility of the ballot has offered a great incentive to women to gain the intelligence needed to make their interest wise as well as earnest, in making our public schools worthy to receive and educate children from the best homes. What can we do by our votes for the good of the schools? This question may be asked by some who are either indifferent to the subject or who may wish to know their duty in the matter. If the schools in a town or city are below the average, they are so either because the committee are not equal to the work of making them good, or because public sentiment will not sustain the committee in their efforts for improvement. But in either case women help make public sentiment, and are responsi- ble for whatever may be wrong in it, if they do not use their influence to make it what it should be. If the school committees are competent, women should show that they recognize and appreciate the efforts to improve the schools, by increasing the majority at an election, by the votes of all the earnest women in the State. Teachers are entitled to a recognition by all the inhabitants of the town. Oftentimes they are young, with good ability and fair training, but lacking experience, which is of the utmost importance in their work. Women have it in their power to be of great strength and support to teachers of this class. It may be a criticism, a suggestion, a word of encouragement that will lighten the burden that weighs heavily upon every one who elevates the profession of teaching to where it belongs. The women of every city and town should see to it, that one woman or more is chosen on the school committee. There are now in Massachusetts more than one hundred women serving upon school boards. Our worthy Secretary of the State Board of Education, Mrs. Dickenson, says that, “while men are chosen for many reasons, women are chosen for solid merit, for the high order of service they render.” They observe the habits and condition of the children, and are skilled to invent ways of improvement. They notive Political Conditions. 3.11 the relations existing between teachers and pupils, and encourage the use of the highest principles in school government. They are ever watchful over the health and comfort of the teacher and school-children committed to their care. This is especially true of their forethought for the teachers and pupils in the primary grades, where the nervous strain on the teachers is most intense. There are some women in every town who have the educa- tion, experience, and leisure that render them peculiarly fitted to occupy an important place in directing the work in the public schools. A large number of the public-school teachers are women, and a share of the supervision of the schools should be placed under their direction. The safety of the nation depends largely upon the management of our public schools. As William von Humboldt stated the case, “Whatever we wish to see introduced into the life of a nation, must first be introduced into its Schools.” The school is a child of the State, the State declaring its love by teaching the children how to make the most of themselves and the world around them. - It has been said there are four things which the State should see that its children have an opportunity to learn, viz., to think, to work, to behave, and to love their country. These four are the corner-stones of the founda- tion of our homes and the Union. Can women, can the mothers of this nation, after building upon this foundation until our children are placed in the public schools, can we sit quietly by and say we have no part in this great school life P Shall we trust the formation of our child’s character to others and not give our own influence to brighten and refine it? Shall we, by our indifference to duty, contribute to the triumph of evil over good? Nay, rather let us go back to our homes with a renewed determination to take part in this great struggle for the welfare of our schools, our homes, and the nation we love so well, and never falter until the women of every State in the Union are represented upon the school boards. Miss ANTHONY. I now have the pleasure of introducing Rev. Annie Shaw. Miss SHAw. You have all heard what school suffrage is in the State of Massachusetts, and it isn’t much of anything, for we have not school suffrage; we haven't anything but school committee suffrage, and that is a good way from school suffrage. - When the law was passed giving us school committee suffrage I felt as old and as large as my brother did when he was twenty-one ; and so I im- mediately started with some of the ladies of my church to register. We went out into the field to find a person to register our names, we hunted him up and brought him in from the hayfield, and then we all stood along in a row, like a lot of school-girls, waiting to take our oaths. The way they do this in Massachusetts, they make us women swear to our property in order to: tax us. That isn't the way they do with men ; they tax them first and then send in their bill and let them do the swearing afterwards. I had never been * 312 International Council of Women. taxed before for three reasons: being a Methodist preacher, nobody supposed I had anything to tax, and nobody asked ne; and then again, having paid the tax on the property I did own in the place where it was, we in Massa- chusetts, by a double system, have to pay it over again, and I wouldn't pay it anyhow ; and then again, I don't believe in taxation without representa- tion, that is tyranny, and I never pay a cent of taxes unless I am obliged to. º Upon going there we women stood up in a little row, and took our little oath in regard to property. My property yields me stos a year. Out of this enormous income I paid $22.5o tax leaving me a large amount of money to live on the rest of the year, you see. On the morning of the elec- tion I did not know, as we lived in the country, when we were to vote for school suffrage; so we went early. The way they do there, they stand in a sort of line or procession, you know, as they do in our country places, and vote first for one thing and then another ; so we stood there until our time came. At nine o'clock in the morning we got our places; and presently the men who were there began burning incense on the altar of liberty, and the smoke began rising until by and by, along toward noon, we could scarcely see across the house. We live in a seafaring place, where they smoke red herring, and every one of us went through the process and know how red herring feel when they are smoked through. At three o'clock our time to vote for school committee came, and now, we thought to ourselves, is our opportunity. Just as the time was announced the moderator said, with great dignity: “I appoint three men to nominate agentleman for school committee.” And they walked out and returned with the name of the only man in town whom they could persuade to take the office. There was no pay to the office, and in order to get a man to take it they had to talk to him of George Washington and the Pilgrim Fathers and the Fourth of July, and wave the flag there in his face for an hour. So they nominated the only man they could persuade, and the moderator said: “I appoint Captain Crowell to cast the ballot for the town.” But I said, “Gentle- men, I thought I was to vote; ” but they said, “This is the way we always do it.” I said, “Yes, I know, but I have paid $22.5o tax; I have been smoked done, and I want to be allowed to vote; may I not be allowed to cast my vote P’’ He said, “Ladies, we have no time to spare.” I said, “Gentlemen, I think I ought to vote, and I want to vote.” “Very well,” said he, “if you must vote, vote for the town.” But I said, “I can't do that, gentlemen, because there are five other ladies here, who all want to vote.” And as I was talking, an old man, with a pipe in his mouth, snarled out, “That's just the way ; just the way I knew it would be, just the way.” The moderator quieted them down after a little, and I said, “Gentlemen, I insist upon voting; I came here to vote; ’’ and then I nominated one of the ladies who was with me as my candidate for school committee, and then immediately we began to buttonhole and every one began to vote, and every- Political Conditions. 313 body began to dive to get a chance to vote for school committee; and it took us just three hours to vote. And then the old gentleman who was so angry that the institutions of the fathers had been overturned immediately mounted a chair, and, doubling up his fist, exclaimed, “If this is woman’s suffrage, I am agin it every time. Here we have spent three hours on the school-house, when we needed it all on the herring brook.” So that is my voting ; that is the opportunity which we say we women' are not equal to grasp When the question of appropriations for schools came up, there was a certain class of men who wanted to cut them down, and I was asked to speak a word against it, and I said I would do it gladly; but the moderator said: “The lady can not speak upon that subject.” And I said: “Why not ; I am entitled to vote on this subject?” And he said : “No ; you don't vote on questions pertaining to schools; it is only a ques- tion pertaining to school committees’’—and that is school suffrage And men who never paid a dollar of tax, and men who never paid a dollar for the town, voted to cut down that appropriation, but to increase the fund to support the poor outside of the poor-house, knowing very well that the women who paid the taxes would raise that fund. I said to the gentlemen: “Can't you stop this?” and they said: “No, ladies; we can’t stop this.” I looked up to see who it was, and I saw he was running for representative, and I knew he couldn’t stop it, because there were nine or ten votes involved there. Finally I said: “Gentlemen, I can stop my part of it, because I will not pay another cent of tax in Massachusetts while I live.” He said: “You can’t help it; that is what school suffrage does for women in Massachusetts. They register and swear to their property, and we know what they have and we tax them after.” Said I: “Gentlemen, you will never tax me again in Massachusetts.” They laughed at me and said I could not help it; but I could. I happened to be my own master, so the next day I put my prop- erty in such a shape that it has never been taxed in Massachusetts since, and it never will be taxed there if I live there until the angel Gabriel blows the last trumpet. It costs me more not to pay the tax than it would to pay it, and my friends say: “You are squandering your money.” I know I am squandering my money, but if I have any money to squander I want to do it. That is my experience on school suffrage in Massachusetts. Now, do you wonder that every woman in the State is not anxious to be taxed and get nothing but the privilege to vote on such an unimportant mat- ter as this, knowing full well that if she does vote it will amount to nothing at all P - Miss ANTHON.Y. Mrs. Anna Randall Diehl, of New York, will read a poem entitled “The Flag at Half-Mast,” written by Mrs. Helen Cook. Mrs. DIEHL. Just a year ago Miss Wolfe, one of the greatest philanthro- pists in this country, was about to be buried. I went to the mayor of the city of New York and respectfully asked him, if he would allow the flag to - 2 21 314 International Council of Women. float at half-mast on the City Hall on the day of her burial. He said it could not be done. I said: “Did not the flags hang at half-mast when Peter Cooper lay dead?” “Oh yes,” said the mayor, “but Peter Cooper had been an alderman.” Then said I : “The flags floated at half-mast for Peter Cooper the alderman, and not for Peter Cooper the great philanthro- pist.” He admitted this to be so. Then, said I : “If Jaehne and the other boodle aldermen who are now at Sing Sing were to die, the flags on the City Hall would have to float at half-mast for them P'' And Mr. Hewitt laughingly said that he supposed the friends would have a right to ask It. This poem was written by Mrs. Cook while the flags were floating at half- mast at the time of the death of Peter Cooper. THE FLAG AT HALF-MAST. I sat and watched the flags to-day, Some fluttering near, some far away; I saw them shrink and cling, as if They could not float for weight of grief; And then the soothing April wind Just kissed their hems with touch so kind, They floated out, and I could see They were all hung half-mast ! “Ah, me ! Some man is gone | Never,” I said, “Were flags half-mast for woman dead.” And why, oh, world, I ask you why That flag up there in the blue sky That floats half-mast for men who have Perchance no laurels for their grave; \ The flag for which my grandsires died, Which was my honored mother's pride, That gives its pledge of grief to-day, Should not when I shall pass away— My work all done, my prayers all said, Why not half-mast when I am dead 2 As soon as life's affections move, Oh, does not woman learn to love Each fold and stripe and every star That symbols liberty, not war? That flag for which the sons she gave Have marched unflinching to the grave, That hung half-mast when life had fled, Yet ne'er would droop o'er her when dead. If I fought battles all my life With sin and wrong and human strife, And gained my victories great and grand As any soldier in the land, Or taught the lowly how to live, Gave to the poor all I could give, Gave to life's wounded ones the Wine From the great healing Fount Divine; And turned the evil into good, - Blessing the world's sad brotherhood With deeds of hand or heart or pen; Of suffering, dying, even like men, No starry flag would float o'erhead Half-mast that I was lying dead Political Conditions. 315 And yet I love that flag so well ; I love to watch it rise and swell, Like a proud bird, whose tireless wings Could soar through cloudland, as he sings The song of Freedom with his might, The Song of Justice, Truth and Right. I watch its graceful rise and fall In the soft air, and think of all The women who have won a name Immortal in the world of fame, - That brightens history's treasured page ; The true of earth, the pure, the Sage, The gentle ones, the singers sweet, The martyrs with their bleeding feet ; Yet, had I yielded all I prized, And even life had sacrificed, And my poor name had led them all, No flag half-mast would rise and fall In the free heavens overhead, That I was hushed and still and dead. Miss ANTHONY. I should have announced at the beginning that the reason the programme is not fully carried out this evening, is that Mrs. Neymann is not able to leave her room at the Riggs House. I hope she will be with us to-morrow evening. Next I shall introduce to you Mrs. Laura M. Johns, president of the State Association of Kansas, who will tell you about municipal suffrage there. She has had the honor of casting a ballot at least once. Mrs. JoHNS. Fellow-citizens: Isay fellow-citizens, because I have arrived at the dignity of citizenship—that is, I am a fractional citizen—that is, I am partially enfranchised, as I have a municipal vote. I am asked to tell you something about municipal Suffrage in Kansas, and I want to tell you that Kansas is the first State in the Union to confer this honor upon women. If I were not so very much afraid of this great audience before me and this other great audience at my back, I should tell you a great deal about it. I should like very much, indeed, to tell you how at that first election in which women participated the well-worn, old fogy objections about woman suffrage died and were buried and no psalm tunes were sung at the funeral. You see the people, even in Kansas, had talked about women as if they were full of frozen wickedness, and as if, when they got near enough to the ballot- box to cast a ballot, it would be like Baron Munchausen's trumpeter, whose trumpet was full of wicked tunes, and the weather was so cold that they froze up ; but when it got warm the contents of the trumpet melted and all those wicked tunes came out; so they all talked as if they thought all women were full of frozen wickedness, and that the frozen wickedness would melt and come out of the ballot-box. The old institutions were not overturned, society was not revolutionized ; the dinners were cooked, buttons sewed on, babies' faces washed just the same as before, and the regular spring house-cleaning came on with the same cast-iron regularity and the same flavor of soapsuds and general air of deso- 316 International Council of Women. lation ; and we bought our spring bonnets right after the election, and we kept on buying pretty dresses with just as much money as we could get, and, indeed, I think our husbands had hoped it would make some difference in these things, especially when the bills came in. Those objections, you see, have vanished. We have heard a great deal about them and are very tired of them. Some of us voted with our husbands, and some of us voted against Our husbands; but the majority of us—and I have been up and down and about in our State a great deal, and I think I know—I verily believe the majority of us voted just as we pleased—just as nearly in accordance with our own convictions, just as little influenced by our husbands and fathers and brothers as men are by their brothers and fathers. And I know of only one case of domestic jar that occurred. I know of only one man who whipped his wife, and that man was in the habit of whipping his wife, anyhow. I noticed that where difficulties occurred in families, it was always where difficulties were in the habit of occurring. It has always been said that we would meet such dreadful things at the polls. We were very much astonished to find exactly the same men there that we met in the streets, in the post-offices, in the opera house, and whom we do business with, and they behaved just about the same on that day as they usually do. They doffed their hats and smiled and bowed, and we smiled and bowed back to them. We thought they were rather pleased to see us, and we were rather pleased to see them, and those elections were the most orderly ever held in Kansas. b. Now, as to the result of that election. Better men were elected to our municipal offices. We didn’t accomplish quite all we undertook to ; we didn't always elect our candidate ; our choice didn’t always turn out to be a wise one ; but the determination to have purer city government did result in better and safer government. And during this last year a fiercer war has been waged against the vices which are Sapping the life-blood of our nation. And we don’t lose a single bit of the chivalrous attention of the men, either. They pick up our handkerchiefs just as they did before ; they carry our para- sols just as they did before; in fact, it is my honest conviction that we have greater respect from men than we had previous to our enfranchisement, because we are now not only women, but we are citizens besides. As to the effect of this experiment upon the enforcement of our prohib- itory law, I have this to say: that the officers elected by women's votes were in nearly every instance in sympathy with the law, and did carefully aid in its enforcement ; even when an anti-prohibition man was elected, the pressure which we were able to bring to bear upon him by reason of our ballots, resulted in compelling him to perform his duty. But when we didn’t suc- ceed in electing our choice we didn't sit down in our easy-chairs and say, Peace Peace | No. In the language of my friend, Miss Shaw (classical language), we “tagged them up,” we followed them with petitions; and our protests and our petitions were not flung under the table and out of the Political Conditions. 317 window, as formerly. We felt that our influence was greater than it ever had been before. Attorney-General Bradford said to me, that in those large cities, in which women took the least active interest in the election, there the prohibitory law was openly defied, and his work was harder; but in those large cities where women took an active part in the municipal election, the prohibitory law was enforced, as well as other laws for decency, sobriety, and good order. And we have not repented that we voted. We are not only unrepentant, but proud that we voted, and proud of the consequences—that everything good and nothing evil has resulted from it. We have spent a little time since that in circulating a petition for full suffrage, just a little time, and I brought here thousands of names to that petition for full suffrage for women, and since I have been here I have received more petitions with more thousands of names on them. Our second election occurs next week. I shall miss my vote, for which I am very sorry, but in first and second-class cities it is an off-year election, in which the men's vote is always smaller, and I presume it is to be expected that the women’s vote will be smaller. I left the State quite a little time before the closing of the registration books, and from what I could learn then the women in those cities where unimportant elections were to take place, were registering in quite as large numbers as they did last year. In the third-class cities, where the election is important, the women's vote will be very much larger, because women are better prepared to vote. During this year they have bought books and studied political economy. They have studied elective methods and local governments, and municipal governmental machinery, and they are very much more intelligent on the matter than they were last year. I wager that the constitution of Kansas has been better read this year by the women than in all the previous history of the State. I was anxious to tell you about this, because when the returns come in from our next election you will be comparing them with the num- ber of women who voted last year, and if the number falls below 26, ooo I want you to remember that it is not because women have lost any interest, not because they are repentant, but simply because the election is an unimpor- tant One. - I believe the men in my State would vote for a constitutional amend- ment giving women full suffrage; but we have a few men—a few—who are opposed to it. Our Senior Senator, perhaps you will remember, says that the franchise should be extended no further, because we have reached the danger-line now, and especially it should not be extended to women, because women’s virtues would do much more harm than their vices. We would like to know which of our virtues it is that would do harm, whether it be sobriety, or morality, or economy, or our love of decency and good order P And then, he says, if women are enfranchised it would add very 318 International Council of Women. greatly to the mass of illiterate voters, which is very large now. Our women of Kansas will not readily forgive our representative all this. In the gloomy south transept of the Cathedral of Milan, there stands a marvel of the sculptor's art. It is a marvelous exhibit of great knowledge of human anatomy. It is a statue of St. Bartholomew. St. Bartholomew, you will remember, was flayed alive. The artist has represented him with his skin hanging loose over his arm, and the inscription says: “Not Praxiteles, but Lyssipus made me.” So the Senator, for whose ability I have profound respect, whose power of invective is unparalleled, whenever he draws his sword (except upon woman suffrage) and whose blows we must continue to return, not exactly according to Scripture injunction ; I say when our Senator stands in a state of innocuous desuetude, in the shades of political retirement, with his epidermis stretched upon the barbed-wire fence of polit- ical opinion in his State, the verdict of the world will be, “The women did it.” Now, as I have left two minutes of my time, it is but fair that I should be allowed to introduce an ex-Kansas sister, whose work and enthusiasm have been a great help in our movement—Mrs. Ellen S. Marble, of Minne- apolis. Mrs. MARBLE. I owe you an apology for taking one moment of Mrs. Johns' time. But she is like her State, and always has enough time to spare. And So I am glad to speak here to-night because I cast my first ballot in the State of Kansas, and at their polls I fought my first political fight. And I am glad to say we beat the opponents, who were fighting for whisky and intemperance, while we were working for education and temperance. To-night I bring as a sort of all-round representative of a good many Societies in Minneapolis, the greeting to the sisters who have spoken on the various subjects which our societies represent. As State President of the Minnesota Association for Suffrage, and as President of the Minneapolis Suffrage Society, I bring my greetings to these noble mothers and sisters of suffrage here. As Vice-President of the Central Woman's Christian Tem- perance Union and Superintendent of their work in the State Reform School, where two hundred boys and twenty-five girls are confined, I bring the greet- ings of thirteen well-organized and actively-working unions of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, to our grand sisters of the White Ribbon. As Secretary of our White Cross Society, I bring their greetings to our lovers of social purity. As Secretary of our beautiful Maternity Hospital, I bring their greetings to the philanthropists, and as a church member and a teacher in the Sabbath-school I bring the greetings of our wide-awake Christian city to this wide-awake Council. - - I am asked why I am a suffragist. It is because I have a pure young daughter, fourteen years of age, who, under our laws made by men, may sell herself at ten, twelve, fourteen, or sixteen, but may not give herself in honor- able marriage until she is eighteen. She may sell herself and I am powerless. Political Conditions. - 319 - It is because I have a pure young son of sixteen, whom I have taught that what is impure for his sister is impure for him ; that which she must avoid, he must avoid ; that if she may not go upon the street at night, or into the saloons by day, he ought not to ; and it is because I want to save her and want to save him, that I am here to attend this grand Council. I am for suffrage now and forever, because I want better things for my son and better things for my daughter than their father and mother have ever had. Miss ANTHON.Y. Now we will close with Miss Willard. Miss WILLARD. I don’t know as it will make me stand any better with the ladies of the audience, and certainly it won't with the gentlemen, I sup: pose, but, honestly, I always thought that, next to a wish I had to be a saint some day, I really would like to be a politician. I always found a fascination in politics, and I always reached out with a perfectly democratic grip to get hold of a newspaper, and most of all liked to turn to the editorials and see about the Whigs and Democrats, because they were the ones when I was little ; and father was a Democrat, and I think I got this from him. I think I am his true daughter in respect to this desire. Some one has said history is only past politics, and politics is pres- ent history. Philanthropy and politics, flowing now so wide apart, will flow in a single stream as soon as philanthropists learn they can deal with the sources as well as the results of crime, and as soon as the politicians discover that their functions are assigned for none but philanthropic reasons. In the last analysis the generalization of all that is good and true, will appear upon the statute-books, and every good and perfect gift to humanity will, in a republic, enter into the realm of law through the portals of politics. Now, I was a farmer's daughter, and got this idea of politics through father's and mother's talks together, as much as from the newspapers. I re- member so well sitting by and listening to their talk, and mother was a very motherly woman, and a tremendously potential politician, though I don't think she ever knew it, and I only discovered it within the last fourteen years. I never knew quite what was the matter with her, but she was born to be a senator, and never got there. * * * Then my brother came to be twenty-one, and we had gone around the pastures and prairies together ; we had kept along in our ideas and ambitions; we had studied the same books and had the same general purposes. But lo and behold there came a day when there was a separation. All of a sudden, just about that time, I noticed by the family Bible record that he was twenty-one; it seemed to be an arbitrary kind of figure, but he dashed off and got into the lumber wagon with father, and the two of them, dressed in their best Sunday-go-to-meet- ings, because we thought election day was a kind of Sabbath, went off together and voted for John C. Fremont. - Istood at the window and watched them go off, simply and humbly, girl fash- ion, very innocent of the world, and not a bit strong-minded; yet there came a º 320 - International Council of Women. lump in my throat and I couldn’t say a word. Finally I got voice to say, “Don’t you think we ought to go with them, Mary? Don’t you think it would be a good thing for the country P” I had nothing I paid taxes on, so I didn’t think about it being a good thing for my property; but it was just this great idea of what mother had taught, that the country was a kind of universal mother to us, and that we ought to be loyal and faithful and true to it. And the dear little girl standing beside me said : “Of course we ought to go with them; don’t I know that P Haven’t I got sense enough for that? But you mustn't tell about it, because they would say we were Shriekers.” And so we didn’t say it, and didn't talk about it at all; but we kept up that tremendous thinking, just iike the woman of old is said to have kept these things and pon- dered them in her heart. And these things came into my mind and kept growing on, growing out, and coming up into this age, this wonderful tran- sition age, which goes from one regime into another; this blessed, kindly, tolerant age, which makes all so pleased with such a meeting as this, and makes you so willing for it to go right on. This is the age which shows me how much there might be for women in politics. I said to myself: “Here, politics are sacred ; there isn't anything about it that a pure heart, serving its kind, wouldn’t like to have to do. Now can’t we get politics out of the company of thieves into which they have fallen P Can not we get it out from among the beasts of Ephesus? It is a kind of poor man that went down to Jericho. Are we going to pass by on the other side or are we going to come, like the good Samaritan, trying to get the women to talk about politics as a home question, as something that women care for and are greatly interested in P × 3 × - If you and your brothers say, We don’t think it is because you women are inferior that we don’t want you to vote, but because you are too good and nice and pure to come into politics, then I say to you : My friend, we don’t expect to leave politics as we find them ; not at all. You and your brothers, all alone by yourselves and no women with you, have constructed this pool that you talk about so much, and you don’t admire, and you can’t make it any worse. You know into the witch's broth they pour all the ingredients together. Now, you have all the ingredients there are, except women’s votes. Turn them in ; it may be the branch of sweetness and cleaning it needs ; can’t make it any worse. So I want to say to my brothers, we are coming in, as we believe, just as we should go into a bachelor's hall. We should take along broom and dust-brushes and dust-pans, open the windows and ventilate the place, and try to have a general “clarin '' out, and that is exactly what we want to do in Old Aunt Columbia's kitchen. Brother Jonathan hasn’t kept house there in an orderly and cleanly manner, and if ever a place needed “clarin '' out we think it is the kitchen of Uncle Sam. So we have made up our minds and you will see us coming in, and nothing on this universal earth will keep us out of it. It seems to me just the difference between the Smoking- Political Conditions. 321 car and the parlor-car ; in the smoking-car there are men alone, and in the parlor-car men and women together. And how nice and wholesome it is in the parlor-car ; and how everything but wholesome and nice it is in the smoking- car. It seems to us women that every great thought must be incarnated, that disembodied principles and disembodied spirits fare about equally well in this work-a-day world ; that every principle seeks an incarnation through a brain that can throw it out, through a hand that can cast its ballot into a box, where a republic creates its own destiny. * * * And so we believe in this magnificent scene of politics we may well enter, because the weapons are not carnal, but spiritual. We believe that when coal in the mine and not in the grate will warm you; when flour in the barrel and not in the loaf will feed you, when wool on the sheep's back and not woven into cloth will clothe you, then public sentiment that is lying around loose and not gathered up through the electric battery of the ballot- box, or sent tingling along the wires, will change the ways of men. God made woman with her faculties, her traits, her way of looking at all great questions from the highest to the lowest, and he made her to be a helpmeet for man, and he made man to be a helpmeet for her ; he made them to stand side by side, sun-crowned ; he made them to stand in a republic, as I believe, bearing equally its magnificent burdens. I like to see how men are grandly meeting the uprising of womanhood. I recognized, and all of us here do, that it was our big brother man who said, Come and sit down beside me at the banquet of Minerva. I recognize, and so do we all, that it was a man that encouraged us when we made our first ventures ; that it is not with any special purpose to keep us down that men do not let us enter into politics, but that they are sort of considering it ; they are waiting for us to be a little more anxious. They are waiting themselves to get sort of wonted to the notion, and they are growing rapidly. The time is not distant, and every man knows it who hears me. But I do not forget that if we come, you will have to open the door, and, therefore, I am anxious, in my own heart, to think only kindly of you. I am most desirous to do you justice, and I want to tell you how we would like to build the platform. For our widest plank, the solidest, and the safest we will have right at the foundation of the new platform : “Peace on earth, good-will to men.” Adjourned. SATURDAY, MARCH 31, 1888. MoRNING SESSION. conFERENCE OF THE PIon EERs. Miss ANTHONY. In memory of Lucretia Mott, who, with Mrs. Stanton, called the first convention forty years ago, and in accordance with the cus- tom of Friends, the religious society of which Mrs. Mott was a member and an approved minister, we will now observe a season of silence. After a most impressive silence, the audience joined in sing- ing the hymn by John G. Whittier, entitled “The Reformers.” Miss ANTHONY. I now present to you Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who, with Lucretia Mott, called the first convention of women ever held in the world. We promised you in the newspapers that we would have here the table on which the first declaration of sentiments was written at Seneca Falls, N. Y. But we found the possessors, the McClintocks, felt it a little too precious to make the long journey. About that table sat Lucretia Mott, Martha C. Wright, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mrs. Jane Hunt, Elizabeth McClintock (now Phillips), and her mother, Mrs. Mary Ann McClintock. Mrs. STANTON. In 1840 the World's Anti-Slavery Convention was called in London. In harmony with the invitation, the Anti-Slavery Societies in this country sent over several women as delegates.* I was not a delegate, although I am often so recorded. My husband was, and that was the occa- sion of our wedding trip to the Old World. - When we reached the convention we found there was a good deal of objec- tion to women being received as delegates. It was something that had never been heard of in England, women as delegates to a convention ; to sit as councilors; to have a vote in its proceedings. So the whole of the first day was taken up in discussing the merits of that question. The objections were chiefly drawn from the Bible. At last it was decided that they could not enter the convention, but they were very carefully concealed in some side seats hidden by a curtain, just as you find the choirs in some of our churches. Joseph Sturge occupied the chair. Sitting near to Lucretia, I said to her : “Suppose now the spirit should move you to speak, what could Joseph Sturge do, as a Quaker, in the chair P” And said she “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. There is no danger of the Spirit moving me to speak here.” After listening to all the arguments, which were very insulting to women, as I walked home, arm in arm, with Mrs. Mott, I said. “It seems to me *The women denied admission as delegates to that World's Anti-Slavery Convention, were Lucretia Mott, Sarah Pugh, Abby Kimber, Elizabeth Neal (Gay), Mary Grew, Philadelphia ; Ann Green Phillips, Emily Winslow, Abby Southwick, Boston. * Conference of the Pioneers. 323 high time to call a Woman's Convention. Here are these men from all parts of the globe to discuss the rights of the negroes to freedom, and yet they have no idea of any rights of freedom for women.” Eight years after, when I was living in the western part of the State of New York, Lucretia Mott came out there to visit a sister, Mrs. Martha C. Wright. I then pro- posed to her to call a convention. I had no more idea of what was involved in calling a convention—no more idea how to do it, than to make a steam engine. Nevertheless, I was determined to do it somehow, so half a dozen of us assembled and decided that we would advertise, and we did advertise in the county paper, occupying a space about as long as your finger, no more. We wrote a few letters to friends, and that was all the announce- ment we gave. The next point was a declaration. So we rummaged over all the reports of all the different societies—peace, anti-slavery, and temperance—but none of them were sufficiently pronounced for us; they didn't touch the case. A happy thought struck us—that our fathers’ Declaration of Independence was exactly suited to our needs. We read it carefully over, and found that precisely the grievances that our fathers had to complain of against old King George, we had to complain of against our own Saxon fathers. So we adopted the Declaration of Independence, and we were delighted with our success, that we had a grand document, and were not obliged to write it ourselves. So, gentlemen, your ancestors did that good thing for us. It was equally satisfactory to find that we had the same number of grievances with the fathers—exactly eighteen. Then came the resolutions, and with them we had a great deal of diffi- culty; however, the help of one or two gentlemen enabled us to succeed in getting up a pretty good series; but when they were finished they were not exactly what I wanted. I wanted to demand the right of suffrage then and there, because I saw that was the fundamental right out of which all others should necessarily flow, so I drew up a very short resolution, and my husband said to me, “Now you make the whole thing ridiculous. So long as you advocated simply rights of education, rights of property, rights of chil- dren, and all that sort of thing, it was very well, but the idea of demanding the right of suffrage l’’ And Lucretia Mott said the same thing, and all the committee who were interested in getting up the meeting were opposed to this resolution. So I seemingly gave it up, but when I got into the conven- tion I determined to push forward my resolution. Unfortunately, I had never said a word in public, and how to put two sentences together I did not know. So I surveyed the Convention, and there I saw Frederick Douglass, and I knew that Frederick, from personal experience, was just the man for the work, so I presented my resolution, then hurried to his side, and whispered in his ear what I wanted Said, and he went along awhile very well, but he didn't speak quite fast enough for me, nor say all I wanted said, and the first 324 International Council of Women. thing I knew I was on my feet defending the resolution, and in due time Douglass and I carried the whole convention, and the resolution was passed unanimously. Well, I assure you, my friends, I was delighted with the success of the whole thing. I had read the Constitution and the Declaration of Independ- ence, and understood the genius of our Government, and I had read the opinions of great men, and I found they were all in favor of woman suffrage. Now, said I, the world will accept the argument at once. It is just, it is right, and everybody must see it as plainly as I do. Imagine my surprise after the joy I felt in the perfect success of the convention, for we had a crowded house, and Lucretia Mott and her sister, Martha C. Wright, and other women from the Society of Friends, had made admirable speeches, and we had a magnificent man in the chair, James Mott, the husband of Lucretia Mott, tall and stately, and very distinguished in appearance. In a few days the papers began to come in. I believe every paper from Maine to Louisiana published that declaration and made comments and ridi- culed the whole thing. I was astounded. I had no idea there would be one word of ridicule about the matter. My good father, who was then attend- ing Supreme court in New York, hearing of this, took the night train and rushed up to Seneca Falls to see if I was insane. If I hadn’t had a remark- ably good constitution and a very cheerful temperament, I think I should have been put into the insane asylum. I heard nothing but ridicule. Many of the women who had put their names down in the enthusiasm of the con- vention, as subscribers to the declaration, in a few days hurried to take them off. Men were in consternation about the conduct of their sisters, mothers, and wives in that convention. I never can tell you, I never can describe to any one the humiliation I felt, and especially as I knew perfectly well that I was right. When I met my father, my sister, who had also given her adhe- sion to the principles, was in great consternation as to what we should say in defense of ourselves. I said I thought we had everything to say, and I really couldn’t see what my father had to say on the other side. We talked the matter over until midnight, and I was more than ever convinced that I was right, for my father was a logical and sensible man, and he could not answer my arguments. Perhaps I might have subsided altogether if it hadn’t been that shortly after that I met Susan B. Anthony, whom we have always called the Napoleon of our movement. Then we put our heads together and we commenced our work in earnest with a general attack all along the line. We besieged the legislature every year; we looked all around the country and wherever we saw a convention of men having a nice time, we at once sent a resolution demanding recognition. And I will tell you how we managed. I would write the speeches and resolutions, and Susan would go to the conventions and fire them off. I had a family of young children and Conference of the Pioneers. 325 | it was not convenient for me to go, but I accepted every invitation to do everything, because I knew Susan could do it. Martha C. Wright, Mrs. Seward, Susan B. Anthony, and myself were often in consultation to see what more we could do to keep up the agitation. We tormented our legislators for the woman's property bill in New York, the first State that ever passed that bill, and the first State in the world that ever gave to married women the rights of property. Until that time we had been under the old common law of England, under which women were practically slaves, having no rights whatever that white men were bound to respect. Year after year some new civil rights were accorded us. Then we made an attack on the schools and the colleges, although at one time in all the educational conventions not a woma:’s voice was heard, though perhaps six or seven hundred of them would be sitting around like so many wall- flowers. And so in the temperance meetings—but I leave Antoinette Brown Black- well to tell you about that. But when we think of all that has been done, we can hardly believe what we see possible. From that time on, our con- ventions began to be held all over the country; the key-note was struck in New York; then, Ohio, Massachusetts and Indiana soon followed, holding their conventions from time to time, year by year growing larger and larger. The advanced legislation in New York was copied by many of the new States as they came into the Union and by some of the older States. It is hardly possible to give you in detail all that we did from year to year and all that we encountered in the way of ridicule and persecution. Ridicule was the chief weapon of the press. We were caricatured in all the papers until really the majority of people supposed that the women on the suffrage platform had horns and hoofs. And now, as we sit here, how changed is the scene . Although at our first convention we were in a small Methodist church, and held many afterwards in the open air, in barns, in depots, in the dining-rooms of hotels, here to-day, at the end of forty years, we have the most beautiful building in the Capital, with magnificent audi- ences, and most complimentary notices by the press from one end of the country to the other. This is a great encouragement to the women who are present, and I want to give you a word to take to your homes. As soon as you see a grand truth, utter it, and though you may be ridiculed in starting, as the years go by, it will be received. In this long struggle I have never felt that we stood alone, for as representatives of a living truth we are ever linked with the great and grand of all ages, in every latitude and clime, with those able and willing to live or die for a principle. Miss ANTHONy. I should have informed the audience that the picture on the platform is that of Lucretia Mott. I hope all will feel that her spirit is with us this morning. If spirits are anywhere, and I believe they are every- where, I know we have that loved and venerated pioneer with us to-day. 326 International Council of Women. John W. Hutchinson, the one survivor of the Old Granite State Minstrels, is with us this morning. Abbie, his sister, is not able to be present. It was my hope through all the months of getting up this Council that we should have both John and Abbie with us. Mr. HUTCHINSON. There is a moment in the life of every mortal that is a little better than any other, and this seems to me the pleasant moment in my life, to be reckoned worthy of this position. Having gone through the anti-slavery struggle, and sung the jubilee Song over the downfall of Amer- ican slavery, and engaged in the temperance reform until we have almost seen victory, now to see the culmination of this glorious struggle, my heart is full. Yes, the spirits of the glorious departed may well mingle with this blessed audience to-day. - G-BEETING TO THE PIONEERS. All hail, ye brave and noble band, We greet with cheer and song, Most honored queens of all the land, Who struggled 'gainst the wrong. Bright hopes we bring from East and West, Each Sister's heart to cheer. Though oft oppressed, your cause is blest, Your crown of triumph near. For two-score years, through doubts and fears And conflict fierce and long, We've battled 'gainst the host of sin And fortresses of wrong. With our great leader pressing on, Whose spirit ne'er could yield, Lucretia waved the moral Sword - That conquers every field. Our hearts this day would tribute pay The Staunch and faithful three— Our Stanton brave and Lucy true, And dauntless Susan B. We see the fruitage of the seed They planted long ago. What matter, then, that forty years Have crowned their heads with Snow 2 We honor those Who Watered Well The precious plants which grew, Because the germs had life divine And tears are holy dew. Beneath the Shelter of the trees, To which those plants shall grow, A countless host in future years True blessedness shall know. With hopes renewed again we come In love and joy to greet ; Throughout our ranks no feuds exist, Our unity's complete. We're standing on the mountain top, There's sunlight on our way; The everlasting hills of truth Reach up to endless day. Conference of the Pioneers. 327 From fields of conquest and renown Our trophies rich we bring. This Council will rejoice to hear The victor's song we sing. Press forward, then, our cause is just ; Our triumph all shall hail : From sea to sea, let all be free ; There's no such word as fail. Miss ANTHoNy. I should have said that Mr. Hutchinson's song is origi- nal, but I think you all must have made this discovery, from its appropriate- ness to the occasion. Before I introduce Frederick Douglass, I want to ask the women on the platform this morning, who attended that first Seneca Falls Convention, to stand up. They are Catharine A. F. Stebbins, Sarah Anthony Burtis, Amy Post, Mary Hallowell, Sarah Willis, of Rochester, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The Seneca Falls Convention adjourned to meet two weeks after in Rochester, and my mother and father and sister Mary, though not at Seneca Falls, were at the Rochester meeting. I was teaching school in Eastern New York, and in August following these two meetings, I went home to Rochester, and they told me all about Lucretia Mott and her beau- tiful face and words, and about Mrs. Stanton, how beautiful and grand— never were such words spoken by anybody. My father was most enthusiastic about it, and I laughed and said, “I think you are getting a good deal ahead of the times.” I wasn’t ready to vote, didn’t want to vote, but I did want equal pay for equal work. I now introduce to you Frederick Douglass. Mr. DOUGLASS. I come to this platform with unusual diffidence. Al- though I have long been identified with the Woman Suffrage movement, and have often spoken in its favor, I am somewhat at a loss to know what to say on this really great and uncommon occasion, where so much has been said. Men have very little business here as speakers anyhow, and if they come here at all, they should take back benches and wrap themselves in silence, for this is an International Council, not of men, but of women, and women should have all the say in it. This is their day in court. * * * There was a time when, perhaps, we men could help a little. It was when this woman suffrage cause was in its cradle, when it was not big enough to go alone, when it had to be taken in the arms of its mother from Seneca Falls to Rochester for baptism. I then went along with it and offered my serv- ices, for then it needed help ; but now it can afford to dispense with me and all of my sex. Then its friends were few ; now its friends are many. Then it was wrapped in obscurity ; now it is lifted in sight of the whole civilized world, and the people of all lands and languages now give it their hearty support. Truly the change is vast and wonderful. I thought my eye of faith was tolerably clear, when I attended those meetings in Seneca Falls and Rochester, but it was far too dim to see, at the end of forty years, a result so imposing as this International Council. * * * 328 International Council of Women. There may be some well-meaning people in this audience who have never attended a Woman Suffrage Convention, never heard a woman suffrage speech, never read a woman suffrage newspaper, and they may be surprised that those who speak here do not argue the question. It may be kind to tell them that our cause has passed beyond the period of arguing. The demand of the hour is not argument, but assertion, firm and inflexible assertion, assertion which has more than the force of an argument. If there is any argument to be made it must be made by the opponents, not by the friends of woman suffrage. Let those who want argument examine the ground upon which they base their own claim to the right to vote. They will find that there is not one reason, not one consideration which they can urge in support of man's claim to vote, which does not equally support the right of a WOman to VOte. - There is to-day, however, a special reason for omitting argument. This is the end of the fourth decade of the woman suffrage movement, a kind of jubilee which naturally turns our minds to the past. Ever since this Council has been in session, my thoughts have been reverting to the past. I have been thinking, more or less, of the scene presented forty years ago in the little Wesleyan Methodist church at Seneca Falls, the manger in which this organized suffrage movement was born. It was a very small thing then. It was not then big enough to be abused, or loud enough to make itself heard outside, and only a few of those who saw it, had any notion that the little thing would live. I have been thinking, too, of the strong conviction, the noble courage, the sublime faith in God and man, it required at that time, to set this suffrage ball in motion. The history of the world has given to us many sublime undertakings, but none more sublime than this. It was a great thing for the friends of peace to organize in opposition to war; it was a great thing for the friends of temperance to organize against intemperance; it was a great thing for humane people to organize in oppo- sition to slavery ; but it was a much greater thing, in view of all the circum- stances, for woman to organize herself in opposition to her exclusion from participation in government. The reason is obvious. War, intemper- ance, and slavery are open, undisguised, palpable evils. The best feelings of human nature revolt at them. We could easily make men see the misery, the debasement, the terrible suffering caused by intemperance; we could easily make men see the desolation wrought by war, and the hell-black hor- rors of chattel slavery; but the case was different in the movement for woman Suffrage. Men took for granted all that could be said against intem- perance, war, and slavery. - But no such advantage was found in the beginning of the cause of suf- frage for woman. On the contrary, everything in her condition was Sup- posed to be lovely, just as it should be. She had no rights denied nor wrong to redress. She herself had no suspicion but that all was going well Conference of the Pioneers. 329 with her. She floated along on the tide of life, as her mother and grand- mother had done before her, as in a dream of Paradise. Her wrongs, if she had any, were too occult to be seen and too light to be felt. It required a daring voice and a determined hand to awake her from this delightful dream, and call the nation to account for the rights and opportunities of which it was depriving her. It was well understood at the beginning, that woman would not thank us for disturbing her by this call to duty, and it was known that man would denounce and scorn us for such a daring innovation upon the established order of things. But this did not appall or delay the word and work. * * * Then who were we, for I count myself in, who did this thing? We were few in numbers, moderate in resources, and very little known in the world. The most that we had to commend us, was a firm conviction that we were in the right, and a firm faith that the right must ultimately prevail. But the case was well considered. Let no man imagine that the step was taken reck- lessly and thoughtlessly. Mrs. Stanton had dwelt upon it at least six years before she declared it in the Rochester convention. Walking with her from the house of Joseph and Thankful Southwick, two of the noblest people I ever knew, Mrs. Stanton, with an earnestness that I shall never forget, un- folded her views on this woman question precisely as she has in this Council. This was six and forty years ago, and it was not until six years after, that she ventured to make her formal, pronounced, and startling demand for the bal- lot. There are few facts in my humble life to which I look back with more satisfaction than to the one, recorded in the History of Woman Suffrage, that I was sufficiently enlightened at that early day, and when only a few years from slavery, to support Mrs. Stanton's resolution for woman suffrage. I have done very little in this world in which to glory, except this one act, and I certainly glory in that. When I ran away from slavery, it was for my- self; when I advocated emancipation, it was for my people; but when I stood up for the rights of woman, self was out of the question, and I found a little nobility in the act. - In estimating the forces with which this suffrage cause has had to contend during these forty years, the fact should be remembered that relations of long standing beget a character in the parties to them, in favor of their con- tinuance. Time itself is a conservative power—a very conservative power. One shake of his hoary locks will sometimes paralyze the hand and palsy the tongue of the reformer. The relation of man to woman has the advantage of all the ages behind it. Those who oppose a readjustment of this relation tell us that what is, always was, and always will be, world without end. But we have heard this argument before, and if we live very long we shall hear it again. When any aged error shall be assailed, and any old abuse is to be removed, we shall meet this same old argument. Man has been so long the king and woman the subject—man has been so long accustomed to 22 330 International Council of Women. command and woman to obey—that both parties to the relation have been hardened into their respective places, and thus has been piled up a mountain of iron against woman’s enfranchisement. * * * The universality of man's rule over woman is another factor in the resist- ance to the woman suffrage movement. We are pointed to the fact that men have not only always ruled over women, but that they do so rule everywhere, and they easily think that a thing that is done everywhere must be right. Though the fallacy of this reasoning is too transparent to need refutation, it still exerts a powerful influence. * * * All good causes are mutually helpful. The benefits accruing from this movement for the equal rights of woman are not confined to woman only. They will be shared by every effort to promote the progress and welfare of mankind everywhere and in all ages. It was an example and a prophecy of what can be accomplished against strongly opposing forces, against time- hallowed abuses, against deeply intrenched error, against world-wide usage, and against the settled judgment of mankind, by a few earnest won.en, clad only in the panoply of truth, and determined to live and die for what they considered a righteous cause. I do not forget the thoughtful remark of our President in the opening ad- dress to this International Council, reminding us of the incompleteness of our work. The remark was wise and timely. Nevertheless, ro man can Compare the present with the past ; the obstacles that then opposed us, and the influences that now favor us, the meeting in the little Methodist chapel forty years ago, and the Council in this vast theater to-day, without admit- ting that woman's cause is already a brilliant success. But, however this may be, and whatever the future may have in store for us, one thing is cer- tain—this new revolution in human thought will never go backward. When a great truth once gets abroad in the world, no power on earth can imprison it or prescribe its limits or suppress it. It is bound to go on till it becomes the thought of the world. Such a truth is woman's right to equal liberty with man. She was born with it. It was hers before she comprehended it. It is inscribed upon all the powers and faculties of her soul, and no custom, law, nor usage can ever destroy it. Now that it has got fairly fixed in the minds of the few, it is bound to become fixed in the minds of the many, and be supported at last by a great crowd of witnesses, which no man can num- ber and no power can withstand. The women who have thus far carried on this agitation have already em- bodied and illustrated Theodore Parker's three grades of human greatness. The first is greatness in executive and administrative ability; second, great- ness in the ability to organize; and, third, in the ability to discover truth. Wherever these three, elements of power are combined in any movement, there is a reasonable ground to believe in its final success, and these elements of power have been manifest in the women who have had the movement in Conference of the Pioneers. 331 hand from the beginning. They are seen in the order which has character- ized the proceedings of this Council. They are seen in the depth and com- prehensiveness of the discussions held in this Council. They are seen in the fervid eloquence and downright earnestness with which women advocate their cause. They are seen in the profound attention with which woman is heard in her own behalf. They are seen in the steady growth and onward march of the movement, and they will be seen in the final triumph of woman's cause, not only in this country, but throughout the world. Miss ANTHONY. I now have the pleasure of presenting to you one of the oldest and most persistent of the pioneers, Mrs. Lucy Stone. Mrs. STONE. We celebrate to-day the fortieth anniversary of the first Woman's Rights Convention, held at Seneca Falls in 1848. But, long be- fore our time, the idea of woman’s rights was in the air. The war of the Revolution prepared the way for it. More than a hundred years ago, the sister of Robert Lee, of Virginia, wrote to her brother refusing to pay her taxes, on the ground that, by our theory of government, taxation and repre- sentation went together. But the idea became incarnate in the anti-slavery struggle. Women who heard the plea of William Lloyd Garrison and Wen- dell Phillips for equal human rights, saw that the argument applied to women not less than to the slaves. They took it in, and on ten thousand hill-tops, and in as many valleys, they nursed the idea of equal rights for women. Men felt it too. The opportunity of equal education for women began when Oberlin Col- lege was founded, in 1832. The charter pledged the college to give “to the misjudged and neglected sex all the instructive privileges which have hitherto unreasonably distinguished the leading sex from theirs.” - This was the gray dawn of our morning. Its sure day came, when the sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimke, and Abby Kelly began to speak publicly, in behalf of the slaves. Public speaking by women was regarded as some- thing monstrous. All the cyclones and blizzards which prejudice, bigotry, and custom could raise, were let loose upon these three peerless women. But they held fast to the eternal justice. Above the howling of mobs, the din of the press, and the thunders of the pulpit, they heard the wail of the slave and the cry of the mothers sold from their children. Literally taking their lives in their hands, they went out to labor, “remembering those in bonds as bound with them.” In 1837 Pennsylvania Hall, in Philadelphia, was set on fire and burned down while Angelina Grimke was speaking. In 1838 she spoke in the hall of the House of Representatives in Massachusetts. It was packed, as it probably never was before or since. The great crowd had gathered, some from interest in the slavery question, more from curiosity to hear a woman, and some intent upon making an uproar. Then this quiet Quaker woman arose, utterly forgetful of herself, and, with anointed lips, and eloquence rare and wonderful, she pleaded for the slave. The curious 332 International Council of Women. forgot their curiosity, the mobocrat dropped his brickbat before the solemn earnestness of this woman, who, for the slave's sake, had braved the mob and the fagot, who could neither heed the uplifted finger that cried shame, nor cease for the texts and sermons, or for the odium of the newspapers. To herself, she was not flying in the face of Providence. It was no hunger for personal notoriety that had brought her there, but a great, earnest pur- pose that must find expression. How great a debt the woman's rights move- ment owes to her | But one such speech, or many, could not kill the hoary prejudice of centuries. Circumstances soon compelled the sisters Grimke to leave the public field. Abby Kelly remained, to bear alone the opprobrium that was still heaped upon the woman, who so far departed from her sphere as to speak in public. ‘Whatever of tribulation any of us have known, in the advocacy of this reform, it has been play in comparison with the long, unrelieved torture endured by Abby Kelly, in the battle which finally secured the right of free speech for all women. A sharp onset with shot and shell is no trifle, but to stand year after year, as Abby Kelly stood, in the thick of the fight, while pulpit and press, editors and clergy, poured out upon her vials of bitterness and wrath, required the courage of a martyr and the faith of a saint. Think what it would be to live in the midst of perpetual scorn and reproach ; to go to church and find the sermon directed at you from the text, “This Jezebel has come among us also,” and then, with no chance to reply, to sit and hear all manner of lies told to the congregation about you ; at another time to meet such insults under the roof where you sought shelter, that you fled from it fasting, after thirty-six hours. These things were actual incidents, and only a small part of what she endured. If Abby Kelly had been a weak woman, one less noble or more self-seeking, she would have aban- doned that terrible pioneer's post, and taken an easier way. She could endure anything for the slave, but she found foes in the anti-slavery house- hold, men whose love for the cause of freedom, was less than their prejudice against a woman’s speaking in public. They tried to silence her. For a woman to serve on a committee was thought as shocking as for her to speak. When Abby Kelly was appointed a member of the Business Committee of the Anti-Slavery Society she was asked to resign. She said, “Is it because I am not thought to be competent? If so, I will resign.” “Oh, no ; we know you are competent.” “Then,” said she, “if it is because I am a woman, I will not resign.” - We can have some conception of the situation, when we remember that the Anti-Slavery Society divided on the matter, and thereafter there were two anti-slavery societies: one that permitted women to speak and one that did not. The great service that Abby Kelly rendered to the slave is less than that which she rendered to women, when, at such a price, she earned for all of us the right of free speech. Long after this right was conceded, the effects Conference of the Pioneers. 333 of the old odium lingered, and she was regarded, by those who did not know her, as a pestilent person, no better than she should be. Even as late as the Worcester Convention, in 1850, some of the managers of the meeting con- ferred together beforehand as to whether it was best to invite her to speak, “she was so odious.” But she was present, and in her brief speech said: “Sisters, bloody feet have worn smooth the path by which you come up here.” It was her own bleeding feet that had worn the way, and yet some of that convention feared her for the odium she would bring. So much for the three peerless pioneers, Sarah and Angelina Grimke, and Abby Kelly. As reminiscences are the order of the day, and a conference of pioneers is always something of “an experience meeting,” I will tell a few of my own early experiences. They will show the growth of the cause and the great gulf between the present and the past. In 1837 the Association of Congre- gational Ministers of Massachusetts, issued a pastoral letter against the public speaking of women, calling attention to the “danger which threatened the female character with wide-spread and permanent injury.” The letter was read in all the churches. I sat in the gallery of the church at North Brook- field and heard it read. The body of the house below was overflowing with people and black with clergymen. Rev. Mr. Blagden, who was supposed to be the author of the letter, walked up and down the broad aisle while it was being read, and turning his head from side to side as he looked at us in the gallery, his manner said, “Now we have silenced you.” But he had only sowed the seed of whose abundant harvest this meeting is a part. I was a young school-teacher, still in my teens. If I had ever felt bound to silence by misinterpretations of Scripture texts, or believed that equal rights did not belong to women, that pastoral letter broke my bonds. Six years later I went to Oberlin on purpose to study Greek and Hebrew, and to read the texts in the original, and there I found the inspired truth, that God loves his daughters as well as he does his sons. I graduated in 1847, and during that year made my first public speech for woman's rights in my brother's pulpit, at Gardner, Mass. The next year I began to lecture for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, but the idea of equal rights for women had such possession of me, that I scattered it into every speech. Hiram Powers' statue of the Greek slave was on exhibition in Boston. I went up to see it early one morning. No other person was present. There it stood in the silence, with fettered hands and half-averted face, so emble- matic of woman. The hot tears came to my eyes at the thought of millions of women who must be freed. At that evening's meeting I poured all my heart out about it. At the close Rev. Samuel May, who was the general agent of the Anti-Slavery Society, came to me, and with kind words for what I had said, he admonished me that, however true, it was out of place in an anti-slavery meeting. Of course he was right. I said: “Well, Mr. May, I was a woman before I was an abolitionist, and I must speak for women. I - 334 International Council of Women. will not go any more as a lecturer for the Anti-Slavery Society, but will work wholly for woman’s rights.” An arrangement was made, however, that I should speak Saturday evening and Sunday for the Anti-Slavery Society, and be free to lecture the rest of the week for woman’s rights. Then I undertook what was, so far as I knew, a soli- tary battle for woman’s rights. Outside the little circle of Abolitionists, I knew of no one who sympathized with the idea. The papers were not as ready then to report a woman's rights’ meeting as they are to-day, and the news of the Seneca Falls convention had not reached me. In Hanover street, Boston, was a boarding-house kept by a very respectable retired sea captain and his wife, where I could get meals for 12% cents and lodging for 6% cents. I slept in the same bed with two of the daughters, in the attic occupied by the Servants, and separated from them only by a curtain. I had some small handbills printed, and, as I could not pay for posting them, I bought a paper of tacks and put up my bills myself, using a stone for a hammer. A collec- tion was taken up at the close of each meeting. I went around with the hat myself; there was no one else to do it. The audiences were always large, drawn partly by curiosity to hear a woman, and partly by interest in the sub- ject, and the collection always came to enough to pay the expenses. At first I did not take a fee at the door, from a feeling that everybody ought to hear, and that some might be kept out by a fee. At one time, in Salem, I had engaged a hall, when I had only fifty cents. The Hutchinsons were to sing that night. They did not want to have their audience divided. John Hutchinson came and proposed that we should unite. They would sing and I should lecture, and we could divide receipts. This we did. Then Mrs. C. I. H. Nichols, of Brattleboro, Vt., wrote asking me to come there, and saying that she would arrange the meeting and have a fee at the door. After that, for Séveral years, I followed that plan, and did not see that the audiences were any smaller. I went from city to city and from State to State, carrying the good gospel of equal rights, and seek- ing to create that wholesome discontent among women, which would make them resent their unequal condition and wish to escape from it. But the good sought to be done, was hindered by the falsehoods and misrepresenta- tions of the press. After one lecture in Indiana, the morning paper reported that I had been found in the bar-room, smoking a cigar and swearing like a trooper. Another closed a denunciatory article with the words: “You she- hyena, don’t you come here !” Another expressed its surprise to find a woman’s-rights speaker a modest woman, and said they had always thought of me as of the lion-tamer in Van Amburgh's menagerie. - My first meeting with Mrs. Stanton was at some convention held when her first daughter was a baby. I have forgotten the time and place, but I remember how proudly she held up the baby, at the house where she was en- tertained, and said: “Doesn’t she look like Lucretia Mott P’’ Mrs. Mott Conference of the Pioneers. 335 was our ideal woman, and one of the most persuasive advocates of the cause; James Mott was always with her, and the beautiful harmony of their lives was the best answer to the objection about “ discord in families.” It was at the Syracuse convention that I first met Susan Anthony; and for years after we went through many hard experiences together. From that time we went on holding conventions everywhere, and crowds came to hear us. I think they always met us good-naturedly. Even the mobs offered no violence; they only tried, by howling, to prevent our being heard. We began very early to scatter literature. After the Worcester conven- tions, I printed a little book of tracts which, in Mrs. Robinson's history, she calls the Wendell Phillips tracts. I gathered together the speeches of Wendell Phillips, Colonel Higginson, Theodore Parker, and Mrs. C. I. H. Nichols, and the article by Mrs. John Stuart Mill in the Westminster A'eview, and put them all into one little book, and carried it to my meet- ings. We took quantities of them to Kansas, when we went there in 1867, to work for a constitutional amendment. We demanded a greater variety of work for women, and better wages. It was objected that this would take women out of their sphere. The reply was, that whatever was fit to be done at all might with propriety be done by any- body who could do it well; that the tools belong to those who can use them ; that the existence of a power presupposes the right to its use, subject only to the law of benevolence. We demanded better education for women, and that colleges should be open to them. It was objected that, if the col- lege course was brought to the level of the comprehension of women, it would “lower the standard ” of education. How different has been the actual result | We showed the atrocity of the old common law as it affected wives, and asked for better legal conditions. But it was the demand for the ballot that met with the fiercest opposition. We were told that women would neglect their families, domestic comfort would be at an end, and quarrels between husband and wife would multiply. Last of all, it was said that if women vote, they must fight; that the ballot and the bullet went together. Nobody considered that the woman who had given twenty years of her life to bringing up her family has done as much for her country as the man who may be a soldier. Objections were endless, but they were all answered. The self-evident truths, against which there can be no argument, were all on our side. We knew that our principles were right, and that in the long run they were bound to succeed. We see the proof of it to-day. Miss ANTHONY. I now introduce to you the one man who has devoted his life to aiding his wife in her work for the emancipation of woman, Henry B. Blackwell. Mr. BLACKWELL. I do not claim to be a pioneer in this movement. I deserve no credit for having worked for it. All that I am I owe to women. 336 International Council of Women. For when my father died, in Cincinnati, fifty years ago, a stranger in a new country, leaving his wife and children almost destitute, it was my mother and sisters who organized a school, kept the family together, sent me to college, and gave the best years of their life to the education of the younger children. Should I not be a coward and a craven to deny to such women every right I claim for myself? # * * The first organized demand of American women for legal and political equality was made in Seneca Falls, N. Y., in 1848, but the principle is as old as history. It was taught by Moses and affirmed by Plato. Women in all ages have been rulers in em- pires, kingdoms, and aristocracies, and were made voters in the very for- mation of our government. * * * The woman-suffrage movement is not new ; it is not exclusively a woman's movement, it is a move- ment of women and men for the common interest of all. Let me briefly name some of the salient points in the march of social evolution in this country, which for more than two hundred years has been preparing for the ultimate enfranchisement of woman. Our movement has its root in Quaker- ism. The disciples of George Fox and William Penn were the original set- tlers of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The cardinal principle of Puritanism was manhood suffrage in church and State, but the cardinal principle of Quakerism was the equality of the sexes in the home and in the church. On the banks of the Delaware, in the city of Burlington, on the 2d day of July, 1776, two days before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, on the motion of a Quaker minister, the Constitutional Convention of New Jersey, revising its colonial charter, changed the suffrage clause from “male freeholders worth forty pounds '' to “all inhabitants worth forty pounds,” thus extending the suffrage upon a property qualification to women and free- men of color. The election law subsequently framed used the words “he or she ’’ and ‘‘ his or her ballot,” and for thirty-one years women voted in increasing numbers. In 1800 the women voters of New Jersey decided the Presidential election, giving the decisive electoral vote of the State to John Quincy Adams over Thomas Jefferson. But New Jersey was a slave State, without free schools. The mass of women had no property. The old En- glish common law gave the persons and property of the wives to the hus- bands. An immigration of illiterate Swedes and Germans outnumbered the original Quaker element. In 1807 the Democrats for the first time had a majority of the Legislature, and enacted that henceforth the words “all in- habitants worth forty pounds” should be construed to mean “all white men whose names appeared on the last State or county tax-list.” Thus, in vio- lation of constitution and usage, all women and free colored men were dis- franchised, and all white men, upon the payment of a one-dollar poll-tax, were made voters. Any woman or colored man who should thereafter offer to vote was by law made punishable by fine and imprisonment. And the gallant little State which had stood nobly by the side of Washington became, and has ever since remained, subject to political and money monopolies. Conference of the Pioneers. 337 But woman-suffrage sentiment was not confined to Quaker New Jersey. In Virginia, more than a century ago, the sister of Robert Henry Lee, and the wife of John Adams, in Massachusetts, protested against the unrepre- sented taxation of women. In 1787 the first constitutional convention of Massachusetts had woman suffragists among its members. Three times the word “male” appears in the Massachusetts constitution; but in each case a separate motion was made in the convention to strike out the word. In 1832 the anti-slavery movement brought woman's rights again to the front. Abolition allied itself with the cause of woman. The pictorial head- ing of the Ziberator, from its first issue, had on it the kneeling figure of a female slave, with the legend, “Am I not a woman and a sister?” + + + How nobly women responded to that call ! In that same year, 1832, the Boston Anti-Slavery Society was formed by twelve ladies. Miss Sarah Southwick, of Wellesley Hills, Mass., who is with us to-day, joined that so- ciety in 1835. Miss ANTHONY. Will Mr. Blackwell allow me to present Miss Southwick to the audience P (Miss Southwick stepped to the front, and was greeted with great applause.) Mr. BLACKWELL. In 1833 Prudence Crandall was mobbed in Canterbury, Conn., for establishing a school for colored girls. In 1835, as a boy, I was enlisted by my mother and sisters in an anti-slavery fair at Niblo's Garden, New York. A large circle of ladies, among whom was Lydia Maria Child, worked for it as women now work in our New England Woman Suffrage Bazaar. Similar fairs were annually held by women to raise money for the support of the movement. In 1835 eight hundred New York women peti- tioned Congress for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. In 1837 Sarah and Angelina Grimke, of Charleston, S. C. (Quaker sisters), freed their slaves and went to Boston. They claimed the right of women to take part in politics as speakers and leaders of public opinion. Then, as now, women were found to oppose the rights of their own sex. Catharine Beecher, daughter of Dr. Lyman Beecher, a remonstrant, published an essay on “Slavery and Abolitionism with Reference to the Duty of American Females,” addressed to Angelina Grimke. To this the Grimke sisters re- plied in a series of thirteen letters, which the biographers of Mr. Garrison pronounce “the beginning of the woman’s-rights agitation in America.” The Massachusetts General Association of Congregational Churches took alarm, and issued a “pastoral letter,” which affirmed that the New Testa- ment teaches the subjection of woman. * * * In 1839 the right of female members of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society was questioned. But Francis Jackson promptly ruled that “it is in order for women to vote,” and no appeal was taken. But now a tempest arose over “woman’s rights.” Its advocacy was confined to the “Garri- sonians.” The “evangelical '' wing and the voting Abolitionists opposed International Council of Women. the public speaking of women. One anti-slavery leader wrote, in 1839, of the Cleveland convention, “Our meeting was a grand one. Four hundred delegates. No miserable woman question to gag or perplex us.” Elizur Wright complained that “everything has been made to turn on the woman question.” He urged a new departure in which “the confounded woman question will be forgotten, and we shall take a living position.” In May, 1840, there was great excitement respecting the annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York. If possible, women would be excluded. But the New England Abolitionists were equal to the emergency. They chartered a special steamboat and sent over four hundred delegates to New York. The question was on the admission of Miss Abby Kel- ly as a member of the business committee. Out of a total of 1,008 votes a hundred majority voted in her favor. Tappan, Phelps, and Dennison at once declined to serve. Tappan said: “To put a woman on a committee is ‘con- trary to the usages of civilized society.’” Revs. Phelps and Dennison said: “It is “ contrary to the gospel and to our consciences.’” They with- drew with the minority, and formed a new society. In 1840 Harriet Martineau, Mrs. Wendell Phillips, Mrs. Chapman, Mrs. Child, Abby Kelly, and Emily Winslow were made delegates to the World's Anti-Slavery Con- vention in London. They were refused admittance, and Mr. Garrison there- upon refused to act in the convention. Between 1840 and 1845 the anti-slavery movement East and West crystal- lized into two distinct phases—the moral and the political. The moral, or Garrisonian wing, was conspicuously in favor of woman’s rights, and was largely maintained by women: Abby Kelly, Maria Weston Chapman, and Lydia Maria Child, in Massachusetts; Elizabeth Buffum Chace, in Rhode Island ; Lucretia Mott and Mary Grew, in Pennsylvania; Sarah Otis Ernst and Josephine Griffing, in Ohio. In 1845 Elizabeth Blackwell began the study of medicine. She had great difficulty in gaining admission to a medi- cal college. But Geneva, N. Y., opened its doors. I was present at her graduation, in 1849. She was the first woman who ever received a medical diploma. In 1843 Lucy Stone, a farmer's daughter, with a few hard-earned dollars raised by teaching, studied at Oberlin College for four years, talking woman's rights, to the consternation of the faculty, who regarded her with mingled respect and terror. In 1846, Antoinette Brown, going there to study theology, was warned, before crossing the Ohio line, against a girl there with woman’s-rights ideas. The last contest against the right of woman to act and speak in politics was some years later, in the World's Temperance Con- vention in New York, where Rev. Antoinette Brown was silenced and ex- cluded by a mob of ministers led by Samuel Carey, of Ohio. Previous to this, woman suffrage had begun to permeate the Whig party. In 1836, in Illinois, young Abraham Lincoln boldly said : “I go for all sharing the privileges of the Government, who assist in bearing its burdens; - Conference of the Pioneers. 339 consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage, who pay taxes or bear arms, by no means excluding females.” The Presidential campaign of 1840 was signalized by a general attendance of women at the Whig meetings. Women took an active part in the songs, processions, and festivities which characterized the great mass meetings and barbecues. These mixed meetings of men and women, full of light and life and mirth and music, were in marked contrast with the Van Buren gatherings of men alone —often dull and dreary, sometimes coarse and profane, always lacking in the ideality and refinement due to the presence of women. In 1850 a second woman-suffrage convention was held in Mt. Vernon, Knox County, Ohio, by Frances D. Gage and others. They had not heard of the convention of 1848, and supposed they were were the first. In 1850 and 1851 conventions were held in Worcester, Mass. The report of the Worcester convention in the New York Tribune struck Mrs. John Stuart Mill, and led to her remarkable article in the JWestminster Æeziezeſ, entitled “The Enfranchisement of Women,” which started the movement in Great Britain. In 1853 a great convention, gotten up by Mrs. Caroline M. Sev- erance, was held in Cleveland, Ohio, at which I made my own first public speech for woman suffrage. * * * In 1856 the Republican party was organized. Women were active and conspicuous in its support. Its watch-word that year was “John and Jessie,” and the name of Jessie Benton Fremont won as many votes for the cause as did that of “the path-finder,” her illustrious husband. No speaker ever did it such effective service as Anna E. Dickinson. With the growth of that great party, woman-suffrage ideas continued to grow, until, in 1872, the na- tional Republican platform contained this resolution : “The Republican party is mindful of its obligations to the loyal women of Amer- ica for their noble devotion to the cause of freedom ; their admission to wider fields of usefulness is viewed with satisfaction, and the honest demands of any class of citizens for additional rights should receive respectful consideration.” Upon that progressive platform the Republican party reached its culmina- tion, and polled its largest vote. Thus many long years of practical woman Suffrage in New Jersey, and of steady growth of public opinion throughout the country, prepared the way for the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. Since that time there has been an in- creasing and progressive movement on both sides of the ocean, until to-day we stand with our banners shining in the light of victory. Full woman suffrage in Wyoming and Washington Territories, municipal woman suffrage in the great State of Kansas, school suffrage in fourteen States and four Territories, these are our trophies. - - A revolution has been effected in woman's position in law, in industry, in the professions, in education, in the home, and in society. The new parties of temperance and labor have woman-suffrage platforms, and the best elements of both the old parties are becoming enlisted in our favor. 340 - International Council of Women. Miss ANTHON.Y. Now I shall introduce to you a very young lady who went to Oberlin College, and who had a fancy or a freak that she wanted to study theology, and the good professor told her at last that she might. She was not only the first woman to take a theological course, but the first to be or- dained as a minister. Antoinette Brown Blackwell and Lucy Stone were classmates, and, bound to go together through the world, they married brothers. Mrs. BLACKWELL. The “embarrassment of riches” of every person who began to work over forty years ago, is certainly very great. Mrs. Stanton started the great flood of conventions, which has culminated now in this tidal wave; but I shall be forced to go back and give you something of my own record in order to correct misapprehensions. It has been stated here by one of the speakers that I was ordained an independent minister. Independent, I hope, but not in the technical sense; and, to-day, I should like to give due credit to the orthodox Congregationalists, who have helped me wonder- fully by always being so generous as to say, “Act upon your own responsi- bility.” For a year previous to my ordination I was a settled pastor of an Orthodox Congregational church in good and regular standing. The church called a council. The man who preached the ordination sermon was a Wes- leyan Methodist, Rev. Luther Lee, of Syracuse. The ordination was accord- ing to Congregational usage. It is true that forty years ago, on my way to Oberlin, I was warned against Lucy Stone, because she would lead away a young woman by talking woman's rights, and I found the community literally humming over the woman ques- tion, not in public, but in cliques. The discussion was going on every- where. * * *k There never was at Oberlin any objection to a woman taking any course of study she desired. When I went there, having my own views about the desirability of prolonged classical study, instead of taking my place at the foot of one department, I went toward the head in another, and became Lucy Stone's classmate. We petitioned our rhetoric professor, James A. Tome, since he required us to listen to the orations and discussions of the young men of our class, to allow us to take part also. The professor did appoint us to take part in a discussion in the presence of the class, and we did it to the best of our ability. Then the faculty intervened. There were no more semi-public discussions on the part of young women. We already had an association for discussion and improvement. We didn’t call it a woman's club, but we met in those years, 1846–47, and our purposes were exactly what the pur- poses of the women who form clubs to-day are. We were often obliged to bring our thoughts before the class, because there was no other method of making known our opinions. Of course, St. Paul in his teaching to the Corinthians and to Timothy blocked the way, so we prepared essays to read, giving an exegesis of St. Paul's texts, and with the - Conference of the Pioneers. 341 audacity of our convictions we re-interpreted St. Paul. Finally this came to the ears of President Mahan, who never attempted to say that any girl might not do what she pleased ; he was nobly liberal in all ways. He sent for the writer and for her paper ; he went over it carefully, and some months later he decided that it ought to have a hearing. He and Professor Charles J. Finney were editors of the Oberlin Quarter/y Æeview, and he was gen- erous enough to say that this article should have a place there. For it had won position and ought to be brought before the public. The curious part of this was that in the same Oberlin Quarter/y A’eview is an article by Presi- dent Fairchild, then Professor Fairchild, taking a conservative view of the woman question. And President Fairchild, whose daughter is here to-day, read over the proofs of both articles, diametrically opposed in sentiment, and generously came to the boarding-hall and made verbal criticisms. If you take these facts you will understand that Oberlin was intensely com- mitted to free speech. But it made its point so nicely that the reason Lucy Stone couldn’t give her graduating essay was that men sat upon the platform and young men came up to read their essays, because it was men's day; but the day before, we others, not receiving the degree of the classical department, when the lady board sat upon the platform and when the white haired President Mahan -- was the only professor anywhere around, came forward and read our own essays from the same place and to almost the identical audience, which the young men the next day doubtless more brilliantly enlightened. This was Oberlin’s consistency. * When we began to study theology, Mrs. Lettie Smith Holmes and her hus- band and myself were among the students; we had three classes in one— that is, the whole theological department had its literary exercises together, and, under the constitution, it required each member to present an essay, an oration, discussion, etc. The young men of that committee appointed their girl classmate to take part in the discussion. Professor Morgan was one of the most outspoken opponents of woman’s doing anything in public. When the appointment was read off, the professor, coming to the fatal name, looked utterly blank. I think for a moment I hardly breathed ; then he quietly read on the appointments and asked the young men to remain after the exercises. I do not tell the Secrets of learned college halls, but the young men pointed out that their constitution required the young women to take part in all the exercises, and they declined to amend that constitution. And this time the faculty declined to intervene. Then the professor, when the time for debate came, Said, “I can not help myself; if I could stop you I would ; but, as I can not, I will do the best I can to give you instruction ; act upon your OWn responsibility,” and she did. They kept that contract faithfully for three years. The World's Temperance Convention in 1853 was the first that ac- 342 International Council of Women. Cepted a woman delegate. I came from two societies, with two deacons of my church, for at that time I was a pastor. We had decided that I should simply rise, say that I was a delegate, thank them for courteously receiving me, and then quietly withdraw and go to one of our con- ventions, which was being held at New York city at the same time. Wendell Phillips and Mrs. Severance were with me, and we three were the only persons who came to present this delegate's credentials. But the moment I attempted to thank them, the whole house seemed to rise en masse, and such a hubbub, such a confusion, such a determination not to hear a woman’s voice in a temperance convention . It was some- thing to remember to one's dying day ! We quietly waited and the whole day passed over. Nothing could be done; it was all discussing “Shall the woman speak P’’ I was a delegate, was accepted, and was admitted. “Shall she speak?” and the answer was every time “No.” We adjourned, and the next day came together again, and other delegates were there to do what they could, and for five hours I stood, only wishing to talk one minute perhaps, but for five hours I stood there, feeling that I had a right to free speech as a delegate. Then they adjourned the convention and ruled out all except speakers invited. Indeed, they had done that once before. They had decided that no one should speak in the convention unless invited to the platform, but Neal Dow was generous, and when he saw me, a woman, he invited me to the platform, and so I stood there for five hours. Miss ANTHONY. I now have the pleasure of presenting to you a man who, though he didn't stand by Mrs. Stanton's resolution in 1848, because he wasn’t there, did stand by her at a later day, when the cry was, “This is the negro's hour.” When Mrs. Stanton dared to say, “I believe in suffrage for all men and all women; still, if the Republican party will insist upon taking a wheelbarrowful at a time into the body politic, I insist that it is more important for this Government to have a wheelbarrow-load of intelli- gent, native-born, educated, tax-paying women than of ignorant plantation men,” At the close of the war we had a fearful word battle as to who should come into the kingdom of politics first—black men, or all the disfranchised men and women, black and white. During those discussions there was one man who stood upon the platform here in Washington, in 1869, and said: “If need be, I would prefer to bide my time for twenty years before I shall deposit a ballot, if at that time I may be allowed to take my wife and daugh- ter with me to the ballot-box.” That man was Robert Purvis, of Phila- delphia. Mr. PURVIS. I am very sure that our Chairman did not intend to em- barrass me by a reference to a matter which, it seems to me, does not merit so much compliment as she has given. It was the most natural thing for me to do, and the only matter of surprise is that any one in the same circumstances would not have been equally ready to do it. I value the honor of being Conference of the Pioneers. 343 ranked as a pioneer in this cause, although I can not claim, as my friend Douglass can, to have been a member of the first Woman’s Rights Conven- tion at Seneca Falls; but I owe it to myself to say that anterior, some few years at least, to the matter to which Mrs. Blackwell has referred in the test vote touching the appointment of Abby Kelly, subsequently Abby Foster, I stand rightly upon the record in that vote which I gave that time. I had before committed myself to the belief that whatever was morally right for a man, was equally so for a woman. This cause, Miss President, is in many respects analogous to that which you and our esteemed President, Mrs. Stanton, and our friend, Lucy Stone, and our beloved friend, Mary Grew, whom I am glad to see here this morn- ing, waged against the slave power in our land. You know how we boasted then and we boast now, but with a little more consistency, that our land is the freest land upon the face of the globe. We exultingly pointed to the truth, as in our Declaration of Independence, that all persons were born free and equal, and were endowed with an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of hapiness, and yet at that very time we held one-sixth portion of the people of this country as chattels, slaves, to be bought and sold, and to be branded and whipped, and killed all the day long. With sublime impudence we boasted that this was the land of the free and the home of the brave. We were, in truth, a country “Where the fustian banner proudly waves In splendid mockery O'er a land of slaves.” Turn from this inconsistency to another. We yet hold and declare as a parallel and a paradox, that the right of voting and representation are recip- rocal ; that all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed ; and, in face of this, in the presence of women who constitute one-half of this population, we ignore the application of what we consider to be truths. It was not my purpose, however, to occupy my moments with words of this kind, but it was, simply, Miss Chairman, to present to you and your coadjutors my deepest, heartiest, warmest congratulations at the marvelous success that has followed your labors—a Success that portends, in the near future, your emancipation. You recollect a few years ago a Scotch poet named Mackay, writing in the interests of the toilers of Europe, and in Great Britain, particularly, wrote “There's a good time coming, boys, a good time coming; wait a little longer.” Upon one occasion, when they were singing this song, a wearied toiler, whose aching heart was longing for the breaking of the day when the heavy burden upon him might be lifted, rose in his place, and with honest simplicity, inquired of the singer whether he could name the day. I possess no gift of prophecy: I can not penetrate the vista of the future, but I believe I can name the day of “the good time coming.” I see it, I feel it. Our good President told us that the signs of the times indicated 344 - International Council of Women. this. It is so. It comes to us in its animating and inspiring force. It ena- bles us to see throughout the world, that despotism is becoming, to use a mild word, unfashionable ; that scepters are being respected only as they rule in righteousness, to effect purposes of mercy and benevolence. That the thrones of all despots, great or small, wherever found, whether as rulers over king- doms or lesser ones in our domestic homes, rest upon shallow, sandy, uncer- tain foundations; that the genius of liberty and freedom is moving on— moving on—demanding in tones not to be misunderstood, demanding in the name of justice and outraged humanity, a practical recognition of the doc- trine of equality of rights for all, without regard to sex, color, race, or con- dition. “There’s a voice on every wave, A sound on every sea, The watch-word of the brave, The anthem of the free. From Steep to steep it rings, Through Europe's many climes; A knell to despot kings, A Sentence on their crimes. From every giant hill, Companion of the cloud, The startled echo leaps, To give it back aloud. Where'er a wind is rushing, Where'er a stream is gushing, The Swelling notes are heard Of man to freeman calling, Of broken fetters falling, And like the Carol of a cageless bird, The bursting shout is freedom’s rallying word.” And now, Miss Chairman, in the hope that I shall join with you in heart and song in the jubilee that is coming, I shall then, as Simeon of old, be ready to say: “Now, Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.” Miss ANTHONY. As we have no pioneer present from the Old World, from England, where Mrs. Peter A. Taylor is called the mother of the Woman’s Suffrage movement; Mrs. Priscilla Bright McClaren, Mrs. Eliza- beth Pease Nichol, Eliza Wigham—as we have none of the older ones present, we deem it fitting that we shall have a song from one of the children of that movement, Mrs. Ormiston Chant. Mrs. Chant then rendered, with exquisite feeling, “The Lost Chord.” - -- Miss ANTHON.Y. Now I will present to you Miss Mary Grew, of Philadel- phia, who was one of the women at the World's Anti-Slavery Convention, in London, in 1840, and who has stood in Philadelphia at the very front, through all the anti-slavery struggle and up to this hour, of the Woman Suffrage movement. - Miss GREw. When the great moral revolution, to which my life was chiefly Conference of the Pioneers. 345 given, came to an end I sang my nunc dimiſſis. A quarter of a century has passed away, and again “mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” You have heard of that World's Convention in London, from which half the world was excluded, where a vow was registered and a purpose formed from which has resulted, among many other things, this Interna- tional Council of Women, occupying a week in the capital of the United States. Of that band of women who sat silent there only three are here to- day. Most of them have finished their course, having kept their faith and departed hence. But those who can look back so far across the years nearly rounding half a century, and compare the condition of woman then with her position to-day, feel the contrast so great, so wonderful, that we instinctively exclaim, “What hath God wrought !” Then custom and religion—no, not religion, but the church—taught man to hold woman as his plaything, pet, drudge, or slave, and when she asked for rights he said, “You have my glory,” and wondered that she was not content to stand in that reflected light. To-day she stands up a human being, endowed with all the faculties of her brother man, demanding her rights. To-day legislators are making laws at her bid- ding. Yes, little by little, step by step, they are meting out justice to woman, protecting her rights of property and of person in marriage, giving her gradually more of these rights, some from a sense of justice, some, doubtless, from a desire to quiet her demands and say, “ Thus far we will go and no farther ; content yourselves with that.” Colleges are open to her. She is reaching into avenues of industry which were closed against her; she is putting forth her hand to take the tools she can use, and generally she does take them. She fills and adorns to-day the profession of medicine. She pleads in our courts, even in the Supreme Court of the United States. You have heard how she has unlocked the door of the pulpit and stands there to-day, ordained by the laying on of hands, to preach the gospel of Him, in whose sight is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female, but all are one in Him. I rejoice to-day that the pioneer who first opened the door of the American pulpit is here, having borne her cross, if cross it were, and wearing her crown now ; sitting with us, surrounded by her sisters who have followed in her steps. There was another pioneer who trod the thorny path, who smoothed the way into the medical profession for those who should come after her. We do not forget her name, though she is not with us to-day, nor do we forget the Sainted ones who, having done well and wisely, having fought out their battles unto their death, have gone hence, and who, perchance, are mingling their sympathies with us now. It is meet, it is fitting that we come here and stand awhile on this mount of retrospection and prospective vision, and recount all the steps of the way as far as we can recount them, and while we rejoice and take courage in 23 346 International Council of Women. thinking over the wonderful things which have been done in the name of justice, and are full of hope, full of faith, we do not forget that the work is not done ; that all is not won ; that there is hard work to be done, battles to be fought, temporary defeats to be sustained, victories to be won, and we do not stand as one who puts off the harness. We have learned much in the past. We have learned the value of weapons. We have learned who are our antagonists. We have learned what is the great opponent that we have to meet—greater, perhaps, than all others combined—the great liquor league of this nation, strong in numbers, strong in wealth, not very strong in moral power, but steadfast, immovable, always abounding in works of evil. In- stinctively, intuitively it is the foe of this cause, for well it knows that its power will be broken when woman comes into her kingdom. In the pres- ence of such a foe we might quail did we not know that the principle of immortal life is in truth and justice, and that the Lord God omnipotent reigneth, a fact which our opponents seem sometimes to forget. But not because woman will do good work in lifting up the debased ; not because she will strike down with one hand this great foe to human progress; not because she will vote in this way or another, do I demand the ballot chiefly ; I demand it on the ground of absolute justice—I demand it on the ground of the foundation principle of this American Government, which takes a lie in its mouth in offering to me, as it does, those principles of the Declaration of Independence, while it withholds from me and my sisters, the ballot. We are going on to victory. In a dozen of States women wield the bal- lot, very much restricted, to be sure. In two Territories they stand side by side with their brothers. Are not these signs of the times sufficient to en- courage us? But most of all we are encouraged because we know that God is on our side; that any cause based upon righteousness can never fail, although it may seem to. Some of us very aged ones, may not live to see the completion of this work; may not join in the jubilee which shall cele- brate the emancipation of woman. It may be beyond the time when we shall leave this world, but if so we shall die full of faith and sure of its per- fect completion ; shall die leaving it confidently and in hope, to the younger workers who are rallying around our banner and crowding our meeting ; who are registering themselves as friends of equality and justice for man and WOIn a 11. We shall bequeath it to you, young friends ; to you gathered here, with the fresh chrism of consecration on your brows; bequeath it to you with all its glorious opportunities, its solemn responsibilities, and with our parting word, “Be thou faithful unto death or victory.” Miss ANTHONY. I now present to you Mrs. Matilda Josyln Gage, who, though not at the convention of 1848, in person, was there in spirit. She attended the Syracuse convention in 1852, at which she and I first met the leaders of the Woman's Rights movement. I never saw Lucretia Mott or Conference of the Pioneers. 347 Lucy Stone, or any of the earlier champions of the cause, except Mrs. Stan- ton and Abby Kelly, until that day. Mrs. GAGE. I have frequently been asked what first turned my thoughts towards woman's rights. I think I was born with a hatred of oppression, and, too, in my father's house, I was trained in the anti-slavery ranks, for it was one of the stations on the underground railway, and a home of anti- slavery speakers. Well I remember the wonder with which, when a young girl, I looked upon Abby Kelly, when she spoke of the wrongs of black women and black men. Then I remember, before the Round House in my city of Syracuse was finished, a large and enthusiastic anti-slavery con- vention was held there, attended by thousands of people who all joined in sing- ing William Lloyd Garrison's song, “I’m an Abolitionist and glory in the Name,” and as they rang out that glorious defiance against wrong, it thrilled my very heart, and I feel it echoing to this day. I am indebted to my father for something better than a collegiate educa- tion. He taught me to think for myself, and not to accept the word of any man, or society, or human being, but to fully examine for myself. My father was a physician, training me himself, giving me lessons in physiology and natomy, and while I was a young girl he spoke of my entering Geneva. Medical College, whose president was his old professor, and studying for a physician, but that was not to be. I had been married quite a number of years when Elizabeth Blackwell was graduated from that institution, which opened its doors to admit her, closing them, upon her graduation, to women, until since its union with the Syracuse University. But with regard to woman's rights proper, when I saw the reports of the first convention in the New York Tribune, I knew my place; and when I read the notice of a con- vention to be held in Syracuse, in 1852, I at once decided to publicly join the ranks of those who spoke against wrong. But I was entirely ignorant of all parliamentary rule, or what was necessary to be done. I prepared my speech, and, going to the convention, sat near the front, and with a palpi- tating heart waited until I obtained courage to go upon the platform, prob- ably to the interference of arrangements, for I knew nothing about the proper course for me to take. But I was so sweetly welcomed by the sainted Lucretia Mott, who gave me a place, and, when I had finished speaking, referred so pleasantly to what I had said, and to her my heart turns always with truest affection. Soon after the close of the convention, almost im- mediately afterwards, it was criticised from the pulpit by the Rev. Mr. Ash- ley, of the Episcopal Church, and Rev. Mr. Sunderland, now of this city, but then established at Syracuse. With the latter gentleman I carried on a long newspaper controversy. As Miss Grew has truly said, it is not religion that has opposed woman suffrage, because true religion believes in undoing the heavy burdens and letting the oppressed go free. But from the church and from theology this reform has met opposition at every step. 348 International Council of Women. Miss ANTHON.Y. We have with us this morning the man who was pioneer in the Senate of the United States, in presenting a proposition for an amend- ment to the national Constitution for the protection of women in the exer- cise of their citizen’s right to vote, and that is the Hon. Samuel C. Pome- roy, now of this city, then of Kansas. - Mr. POMEROY. I can hardly claim to be a pioneer, although, if Miss An- thony will not be offended, I will say that in the early part of this century + I was invited, one rainy evening, to the vestry of a church to hear a speech upon woman Suffrage. Up to that period I had paid no particular atten- tion to it. I heard Susan B. Anthony, and at the close of the meeting I told her, that I believed she was right, and, God being my witness, I have not deviated from that position since. I want to pay a tribute, at the beginning, to her out of respect to whom we bowed our heads in silence. In 1856, when I had escaped prison and reached Chicago and had spoken to the assemblies there and in Buffalo and Philadelphia, Mrs. Lucretia Mott sent her card to have me come and dine with her. At the table were her sons-in-law and some neighbors, and she asked me to tell our story—the story of Kansas. Late in the evening, when I left, she took me by the hand and said: “Go back, be faithful, and you shall triumph.” And those words have been a prophecy and inspiration to me all my life. - As this Convention closes, in coming down from those heights to your various fields of labor and effort, I should like to inquire, What is the future of your effort P I have listened here day after day to wonderful congratula- tions. But it occurs to me that you are not going to victory on these “flowery beds of ease.” Something is yet to be done. I remember living in a town where a mother turned her little boy out, after putting pantaloons on him for the first time, and told him not to go into the water and mud and dirt ; but the little boy came back shortly, having run through every mud-puddle in the neighborhood, and she said : “Johnny, Johnny, what have you to say for yourself?” and he answered: “Mother, there is nothing to say. It is time something was did.” We have had a season of saying. What have we to do? I am told that we must have a grand amendment to the American Constitution. That is good. I hold in my hand a venerable document which I had the honor to present to the Senate on the 7th day of December, 1868. It reads: - Mr. Pomeroy asked, and by unanimous consent obtained, leave to bring in the following resolution, which was read twice and ordered to be printed: Joint resolu- tion proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Be it resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of Amer- ica in Congress assembled (two-thirds concurring), that the following article be submitted to the legislatures of the several States, and when adopted by three- fourths of the States, shall become a part of the Constitution of the United States, and shall be known as the Fifteenth Amendment. * August, 1865, in the little Congregational church in Atchison, Kansas. Conference of the Pioneers. 349 Article 15. The basis of suffrage in the United States shall be that of citizenship, and all native or naturalized citizens shall enjoy equal rights and privileges in the elective franchise. I thought then and I think now that citizenship is the only proper basis of suffrage in this country. That evening, after I proposed this resolution, Mr. Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts, called on me and said he did not think the proposed amendment was necessary. Why? We had just got through with the Fourteenth Amendment; we were then living in a period of amendments. We had just completed the Thirteenth, which was the first amendment of our day and generation. The Twelfth Amendment was adopted in 1802, and we had no more until 1865. I hold in my hand that Thirteenth. It was sent to the States February 1, 1865; it was ratified December 16, 1865, and that amendment was that “there should be no slavery or involuntary servitude under the jurisdiction of the United States, except as a punishment for crime.” Four States never adopted it ; but we had three-fourths of all the States for it. The Fourteenth Amendment is the one that Mr. Sumner said superseded and made a Fifteenth Amendment, which I had the honor to introduce, unnecessary, and why? Because it starts out by saying that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof shall be citizens of the United States and of the States wherein they reside.” And then comes the important point—that “no State shall make or enforce any law abridging the rights of a citizen.” Mr. Sumner thought we did not need a special amendment to say the right to vote shall be confined to citi- zens of the United States, embracing all persons, native and adopted, be- cause the constitutional amendment which we had just adopted, said that no State should make or enforce any law abridging the rights of a citizen. I thought, then, as I think to-day, that if Congress would pass a law that citizens of the United States, of a prescribed age, whether native or adopted, should have equal right to the ballot-box, there is not a court or judge, worthy of the ermine, who would decide against it. How much easier it is to get an act of Congress passed, by a majority, signed by the President, than it is to get two-thirds of both Houses of Congress and three-fourths of all the States to ratify an amendment | * * * This country has no precedent in history for its existence. America holds the future, and holds it because it is working out a pathway of its own. There is nothing like our Government in human history. It is a Govern- ment of the people; it is a conglomeration of all the nations; it is like the English language, made up of every other language—a nation made up of all nations. We are exemplifying the doctrine that God hath made of one blood all the nations of the earth, and He has congregated them here for the development of the grandest principles of human government. I want to say, in closing, that this movement for equal suffrage that began forty years ago; and that reminds me that I was in a convention with Mr. Douglass in 1840, in which Alvin Stewart, Beriah Green, Gerrit Smith and a 350 International Council of Women. host of men and women of whom the world was not worthy, and I remember Gerrit Smith saying, at the close of a remarkable speech : “It will be glory enough for a man to say forty years hence, that he was right in 1840.” Those words have come echoing down the years, and I want to say to these ladies and gentlemen here to-day who were right forty years ago: It is glory enough now to be here and join in these congratulations over the suc- cess of this movement for the education of all people. The education at the ballot-box is the Christ of this period. It shall be the Savior of the world. Mrs. STANTON. Mr. Pomeroy asks us what we propose to do after the adjournment of this grand Convention. The great thing for us to do is to get the women ready to vote, for wherever we go, the first objection that meets us is that the women do not want to vote. We have a large number of women assembled here to-day, and I would like to get their testimony by a rising vote. The audience rose en masse. At the close of Mr. Pomeroy’s address, Mrs May Wright. Sewall stepped forward, quickly followed by Harriette Shattuck, Laura M. Johns, Rev. Annie Shaw, Clara B. Colby, and Rachel G. Foster, each bearing a basket of choice flowers. Mrs. SEWALL. Madam President, even on Pioneers' Day, young people have some rights which older people are bound to respect. The one right we claim to-day, is that of expressing our gratitude. For what are we grateful ? First, for the enlarged self-respect made possible to the young women of this country, by the work of the women who have preceded us. I suppose the youngest of this group (no member of whom professes to be old) has, in her childhood, heard that a baby girl born to a family increased its wealth by $500, while a baby boy was worth $1,000. Such invid- ious comparisons, made in regard to the occupants of cradles, did not increase either the humility of listening boys, or the self-respect of girls. Why has our self-respect become enlarged? Because the women on this platform, with their compeers who have passed on, have shown that women may possess and delight in powers which the world had logically proved that our sex could neither possess nor support. By the direct influence of these women; constitutions and statutes of civil States have been modified, and the constitutions of societies have been framed. These women have preached sermons, pronounced orations, edited papers, and written hymns, which have been listened to, read, and sung by thousands, nay, by millions, of people. - But not only do we owe these beloved women the self-respect which springs from a respect for one's sex, but we owe them for an indefinite extension of youth. Women have always been distinguished by a desire to remain young. Although it was a man who had the credulity to believe in the fountain of Conference of the Pioneers. 351 immortal youth, and the vanity to fit out a fleet for the purpose of discover- ing it, it seems to have been reserved for women to find it. I call upon this audience to witness that the women who have graced this platform during the morning, have discovered the fountain of eternal youth and drunk of its rejuvenating waters. They have found that the charmed spring bubbles, fresh, Sparkling, and bright, in the fields of intellectual and moral activity. Besides self-respect and immortal youth we are indebted to these women for other gifts of priceless value. To them we are grateful for the large work they have made possible to our hands, for the large hopes with which they have filled our hearts, for the visions which their fulfillment of their own prophecies has revealed to the most skeptical eyes. This hour is altogether too serious, too sacred, too deep in its significance to cheapen it by one word of adulation. For every word of criticism and opprobrium that has been pronounced upon these women, volumes shall be written in their praise. For every jeer and scornful laugh, and for every cynical jest, hymns shall be chanted in honor of their memory. Inadequately as this little group of six, expresses the feelings of the young women of America toward these, our leaders, I would pray that you will regard these flowers as symbolic of our affections [the flowers were then pre- sented], and with their fragrance inhale the incense of our gratitude. But pioneers are not always old. A pioneer is one that inaugurates a work. These women were pioneers when they inaugurated the work that they have done, not merely now, in the hour of its partial coronation. No one hesitates to call Frances Willard and Clara Barton pioneers, although they are far removed from three-score years and ten. And even in the work of the International Council we may have pioneers. Indeed, I feel as if this youngest of our number [taking Rachel Foster by the hand] were a pioneer. At this moment, Rev. Annie Shaw, on behalf of the other members of the committee, presented a gold, monogram pin, with these words : Miss SHAW. I have the very great happiness to say to this audience this morning, that this youngest of the pioneers answers Mr. Pomeroy's question, “What are we going to do when the heads of our leaders grow gray, when their steps become feeble, when their hands refuse to labor P’’ Such heads as this, such feet as hers, such hands as she has used for us, and such a kindly heart as she has shown in all this work, shall rise up to take the places of those who pass on. And, as a slight token of our appreciation and love to her, long after the Council is over, we have decided that she shall take home with her I. C. W., that she may look at it and be reminded that there was once an International Council of Women. We have not told her name, but we didn’t think it necessary. It is Rachel Foster, of Philadelphia. 352 International Council of Women. Miss ANTHONY. There are a great many pioneers on the platform who have had no chance to speak. Will you all please stand, that the audience may see you ? - Here is a friend, tried and true, who thirty years ago, gave us sixty dolars a year, to help the cause along—Albert O. Wilcox, of New York city. And here is Clara Barton, who was the pioneer Government department clerk here in Washington in the fifties, before the war, to say nothing of her services in the war and in the Red Cross. Here is Adeline Thomson, one of our oldest and best friends in Philadel- phia. This is Emily P. Collins, who, when she heard of the Seneca Falls Con- vention, called together two or three of her neighbors in the little village of Bristol, Ontario County, New York, and organized the first real Woman’s Rights Society, and who resurrected a capital letter from Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, which you will find in the History of Woman Suffrage.* Will the doctors stand up? This is Dr. Hannah Longshore, who was one of the first class graduated from the Women's Medical College of Philadelphia, of which that noble pioneer, Ann Preston, was president; and here are Dr. Susan A. Edson and Caroline B. Winslow, of Washington. And this is Dr. Ruth M. Wood who, though not a pioneer in years, is in locality; Dr. Wood is physician and director of the Woman’s Industrial Home in Salt Lake, Utah. And there is Dr. Pauline Morton, of my own city; though young, and a homeopath, she is nevertheless one of the city physicians of Rochester, and I don’t believe she neglects half so many of the poor as do her brothers holding the same office. Will Amy Post stand up? I want all to see the woman whose house has been the home, not only of the fugitive slave, making his way to Canada, but of the poorest of the poor, of the unfortunate. Mr. DOUGLASS. I want to say that all that Miss Anthony has said of Amy Post, and more than all she said, and more than anybody can say in her praise, will not be too much. Her home, her house, as it has been well said, has been the shelter of the poor and cast out. The Indian, the African, the despised of every class, have found shelter with Isaac and Amy Post. And I rejoice to see her here to-day, because she was the first in whose eyes I found sympathy and from whose lips I heard words of cheer, after I escaped from the chains of slavery. - *With all my good intentions to present each and every one of the good friends on the stage I missed dear Aunt Dinah Mendenhall, who, in her eighty-sixth year, attended every session of the Council, and who was present at the first Woman’s Rights Convention, held in Pennsyl- vania, 1852. Her house, at Kennett Square, has been the home of William Iloyd Garrison Wendell Phillips, Theodore Parker, Henry C. Wright, Charles Burleigh, Stephen Foster, Joseph Dugdale, Frances D. Gage, and many, many other pioneers of both the Anti-Slavery and Woman’s Rights movements. There were, in all, forty-four persons (eight men and thirty-six women) who wore the Pioneer's badge—a lavender ribbon, bearing the words “ Fio- neer's Day–1848–1888,” in silver letters—hence it was impossible to introduce each, individ- ually, to the audience. S. B. A. Conference of the Pioneers. 353 Miss ANTHON.Y. Now, I introduce to you a woman well known in Wash- ington, a woman who, when we held our first convention in this city in the winter of 1869, wrote a magnificent report in the New York Zribune, and spoke kindly about us and said we were respectable people—Grace Green- wood. Mrs. LIPPINCOTT (Grace Green wood). I have heard of a certain Irish disputant who once, when discussing some religious question—woman's right to preach, or the doctrine of “original sin” (said to be “a very good doc- trine if lived up to '')—was confronted with a very strong text from one of the epistles of St. Paul; but he was quite undismayed, exclaiming: “Paul, Paul, is it. He wasn't one of the twelve He was an interloper, just 1” Now, I have to confess that I am not one of the original, Simon-pure, female suffragists, enlisted under the Stanton and Anthony banner, and that so I am an interloper among the pioneers. Yet I have always accepted and advocated, in my way, the main principles of the society. Why I did not long ago join it I can hardly say, except that I feared being called upon to make off-hand speeches; feared that, not being trained to think on my feet, I might put my foot in it. Then, I had always so many other irons in the fire, I burned my fingers with many of them, and they were often other people's irons; but I have kept on tending them. Still, in this cause, I have wielded a pen-lance, and thrust it in here and there, wherever I spied a weak spot in the enemy's armor. I suppose I have not done enough service to entitle me to a share in the final triumph ; but I shall get there all the same. I have something of the faith of a certain little girl, who, when reproved by her mother for faults and short-comings, and warned that she could not attain heavenly joys if so perverse, cheerily answered, “O yes, I will. Heaven is big and wide, and God is going to let in a thousand naughty children, and I’m going in along with them.” - Like Artemus Ward, who was very proud of the gallant way in which his substitute had fought and bled for his country, I have fully appreciated the bravery and constancy of the first little band who struck for women's rights. I like this good old term. It is like the tattered banner that has floated over a hundred battle-fields. I honor all the old leaders, but I confess I make my lowest sa/aam to Susan B. Anthony. She has dared no more than the others, but she has been compelled to endure more. Lucretia Mott, pure and placid prophetess of reform, disarmed rude opposition by her sweet Quaker serenity, which was after all but a glove of velvet over a grip of steel. Stately Mrs. Stanton has secured much immunity, by a comfortable look of motherliness and a sly benignacy in her smiling eyes, even though her arguments have been bayonet thrusts and her words hot shot; while Miss Anthony, passionate and persistent, with her “undaunted mettle and pure grit,” has asked no quarter, and certainly has received none. From first to last she has been the target for “the slings and arrows of outrageous” journalism. Youthful 354 International Council of Women. - reporters and paragraphists have tried their 'prentice hand on her. When- ever the mother-in-law gave out, there was Susan B. Anthony to fall back upon. She has been a boon and a benefaction to these ingenuous young gentlemen. I remember that about ten years ago I, said to some of the Sauciest of these now in Washington : “For shame, boys; not one of you will ever make the man she is.” I hope they received the admonition kindly, took pattern by her, in pluck and perseverance, and have amounted to something after all. Certainly the women of this great Council have not to complain of jounalistic discourtesy. When I was a young girl, the only women I heard speak in public were Quaker preachers and Methodist exhorters. The first mixed their sermons with singing—about half and half—the second nearly shouted their hearts out, and yet I honored them for daring to stand up and free their minds in the awful presence of men and God. Afterwards came the inspired Pytho- ness—Abby Kelley—the noble Grimke sisters, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth . Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, silver-voiced, crystal-souled Lucy Stone— and the world began to spin. Ah! the changes. It almost takes one's breath away to think of them. A little over forty years ago, two young ladies whom I knew, while traveling on an Ohio River steamer, came very near being put ashore where there was no landing, for the crime of having quietly left the dining table, from which they had seen the magnificent young ora- tor, Frederick Douglass, rudely driven. Less than forty years ago, your present speaker was ignominiously dismissed from the editorship of Godey's Zadies' Book for the dire offense of having published a little poem in the AWałiona/Zra, an anti-slavery journal of this city, edited by Dr. Bailey and John G. Whittier. When, a few weeks ago, I heard that my dear friend, Mrs. Croly, had purchased the moribund magazine of the late Mr. Godey, proposing to reanimate it, I said: “With her splendid business talent and energy she may succeed, provided she changes its name ; anyhow she can't be ‘fired out ' at a moment's notice, being the proprietor of the whole con- Cern.” And this brings me to what I consider one of the great keys to the situa- tion we would occupy—business capacity and training. Let women sing the refrain of Tennyson’s “ Northern Farmer,” “Prupperty, Prupperty ” Nothing will so effectually spike the enemy's guns as land and bank stock. Yes, I have seen many wonderful changes, moral and political, and I expect to see more. I hope to have the ballot before I die. Yet should it only find me in extremis, I think it would be like me to shake the precious scrap of paper in the face of death and the doctors, and say, “I must and will live to use this ’’ - I am a lover of fair play. In all these sessions of our grand Council only one side of the suffrage question has been presented, and so I the more readily yield to a request to give a condensation of the arguments of our opponents, - Conference of the Pioneers. 355 even the most able and distinguished, as contained in some verses I wrote some years ago for one Mistress O'Rafferty, a respectable laundress, who had been importuned by a progressive neighbor to go for the ballot, etc. Since my long residence abroad I have been accused of being a bad American, but you will see I am a worse Irish woman. MISTRESS O'RAFFERTY ON THE WOMAN QUESTION. No | I wouldn't demane myself, Bridget, Like you in disputing with men. Would I fly in the face of the blissed A postles, and Father Maginn 2 It isn't the talent I’m wanting, Sure my father, old Michael McCrary, Made a beautiful last speech and confession When they hanged him in ould Tipperary. So, Bridget Muldoon, hould your talking About “Woman’s Rights” and all that, Sure all the rights I want is the one right— To be a good help-mate to Pat ; For he's a good husband, and niver Lays on me the weight of his hand, Except when he's far gone in liquor, . And I nag him, you’ll plaise understand. Thrue for ye, I’ve one eye in mourning, That's because I disputed his right To take and spind all my week's earnings At Tim Mulligan's wake Sunday night. But it's sildom when I’ve done a-washing He'll ask for mor'n half of the pay, And he'll toss me my share with a smile, dear, That's like a Sweet morning in May. Now where, if I rin to convintions, Will be Patrick's home comforts and joys 2 . Who'll clane up his brogans for Sunday, Or patch up his old corduroys 2 It we take to the polls night and morning Our dilicate charms will all flee, The dew will be brushed from the rose, dear, The down from the pache—don't you see ? We'll soon take to shillalahs and Shindies When we get to be sovereign electors– And turn all our husband's hearts from uS, Then What Will We do for protectors? We'll have to be crowners and judges, And such like Ould malefactors, Or they'll make common councilmen of us, Then where will be our characters ? Oh Bridget, God save us from voting, For sure as the blissed Sun rolls, We'll land in the State-House or Congress | Then what will become of Our Souls 2 Miss ANTHONy. I want to call your attention to this pile of letters which will be published in the Daily Woman's 777%une. Here is one from Ernestine L. Rose, who addressed the legislature of Michigan as early as 1836, demanding woman's enfranchisement. Mrs. Rose lives in London, and is in spirit with us to-day, though too feeble to be here in person. 356 International Council of Women. Here is one from Prudence Crandall, the woman, you remember, whose School-house was burned and who was mobbed and traduced in every way, simply because she taught negro girls to read and write. And here is a beautiful letter from that beautiful spirit, John G. Whittier, and here is one from Elizabeth Pease Nichol, whom Mrs. Stanton, Miss Grew, and Miss Southwick met when they were in London in 1840, and who, on first hearing of this Council, wrote me this beautiful letter, inclosing a bill of exchange, which has helped us along most delightfully. And another is from Dr. James C. Jackson, of Dansville Water Cure, who has educated vast numbers of women how to live. And here is one from Elizabeth B. Chase, of Rhode Island, and one from Armenia S. White, of New Hampshire. Another is from Abby Hopper Gibbons, daughter of Isaac T. Hopper, of New York city, who sends a check because of her reverent memory of Horace Greeley. And here is a letter from Mrs. Mary T. Gray, of Wyandotte, Kas., with a beautiful tribute to Mrs. Nichols, the pio- neer of our movement in Vermont as well as Kansas. And here is one from Dr. Mary F. Thomas, of Richmond, Ind., the sister of Dr. Long- shore, and another from the Hon. Samuel E. Sewall, of Boston, who expected to be here, but who writes at the last moment that he and his wife are not able to leave home. Then here is a letter from Oliver John- son, who was one of the attendants of the early conventions in the State of Ohio. And here is one from Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and one from Theodore D. Weld, that glorious pioneer who, with Henry B. Stanton, led that grand army that came out of Lane Seminary, because they had pro- nounced themselves opposed to slavery. This is from Lucy N. Colman, one of the earliest advocates of woman's rights. This from Amelia Bloomer, who, through her paper, the Zi/y, did much for our woman's cause in those olden days. This is from Hon. George W. Julian, of Indiana, who presented the first Sixteenth Amendment resolu- tion in the House of Representatives in 1868. This is a brief note from our dear Dr. Clemence S. Lozier, who, up to the last moment, expected to be with us. Dr. Lozier's house has been the headquarters of suffrage, in the city of New York, the past thirty years. One name I must mention before Mr. Hutchinson sings, and that is Frances Wright, who was the first woman in this country to take part in a political campaign, that of Andrew Jackson in 1828, and who was truly the pioneer in demanding freedom for woman from the rule of priestcraft, suffering there- for the grossest ridicule and abuse. And yet one word of the work of Mrs. Stanton's later days. She, with the help of Mrs. Gage, has gathered up the facts of this great movement and put them into three huge volumes, entitled “ The History of Woman Suf- frage.” If you wish to learn more of the work or of the men and women who did it, you will find it in these books. If the women of forty years Conference of the Pioneers. 357 ago had realized the importance of the things they were doing, and the words they were uttering, they would have preserved them ; but they thought they were doing nothing extraordinary, and the records were lost. These volumes preserve such fragments as we have been able to gather together. So I urge every one of you to make a solemn resolution to-day, that every good thing which a woman does, every good society that is formed, every organization that you have anything to do with, you will send a short postal card or letter to Lucy Stone, as editor of the Woman's /ourna/, Boston ; to Clara B. Colby, editor of the Woman's ZYibune, Beatrice, Neb.; or, to Caroline Huling, editor of /usſifia, Chicago, that all these things may be preserved. Women will never be properly recorded in history, never be properly painted on canvas, until they do the work themselves. John Hutchinson then rendered, with all his old-time fer- vor, a song written for him over thirty years ago by “Aunt Fanny ” Gage, “A Hundred Years Hence.” He then led the audience in singing the beautiful words of John W. Chad- wick” to the tune of “Auld Lang Syne.” The meeting ad- journed, the session having lasted four hours. EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS FROM PIONEERS. HUNTLEY LODGE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND. MY DEAR FRIEND: As I shall not be able to take part by tongue or pen in your Convention to be held at Washington in March next, I beg you to accept the in- closed little donation toward its expenses. It affords me pleasure to indicate in this small way the interest and sympathy which I feel and have always felt in the move- ment in your country, as well as in that of my own, which seeks to obtain for woman the right to vote in the election of those who frame the laws, which woman equally with man is bound to obey. Earnestly desiring that success may attend your efforts, and that the gathering in March may give an impetus to the cause to which you have devoted so many years of your life, even beyond your highest anticipations, I am yours very affectionately, ELIZABETH PEASE NICHOL. Ernestine L. Rose, in her letter of greeting, asked that a part of an address delivered by her in Boston in 1851, have a place in the proceedings of the Pioneers’ Conference. Some of her words, spoken so long ago, seem like a prophecy of the events of to-day. While nations strive against nations, people against people, to attain the same amount of freedom already possessed in this country, Woman is rising in the full dignity of her being to claim the recognition of her rights. And though the first public demonstration has been here (in America), already has the voice of woman in behalf of her sex been carried, as it were, on the wings of lightning to all parts of Europe, whose echo has brought back the warmest, most heartfelt responses from our Sisters there. + ºk ºx º: * -k * Hymn No. 4, page 19. 358 International Council of Women. And, therefore, while I feel it a duty—aye, a painful duty—to point cut the wrong done to Woman and its evil consequences, and would do all in my power to aid in her deliverance, I can have no more ill-feelings toward him (man) than for the same errors towards her. Both are the victims of error and ignorance, and both suffer; hence the necessity for active, earnest endeavors to enlighten their minds; hence the necessity to protest against the wrong and claim our rights, and in doing our duty we must not heed the taunts, ridicule, and stigma cast upon us. We must remember we have a crusade before us, far holier and more righteous than led war- rior to Palestine—a crusade not to deprive any one of his rights, but to claim our own; and as our cause is a better one, so, also, must be the means to achieve it. We, therefore, must put on the armor of Charity, carry before us the banner of Truth, and defend ourselves with the shield of Right against the invaders of our liberty. And yet, like the knights of old, we must enlist in the holy cause, with a disinterested devotion, energy, and determination never to turn back until we have conquered— not, indeed, to drive the Turk from his possession, but to claim our rightful inheri- tance for his benefit as well as our own. To achieve this great victory of right over might, woman has much to do. She must not sit idle and wait till man, inspired by justice and humanity, shall work out her redemption. It has been well said, “Who would be free, himself must strike. the blow.” It is with individuals as with nations; if they do not strive to help them- selves, no one will help them. Man may, and, in the nature of things, will, remove the legal, political, and civil disabilities from woman and recognize her as equal with himself, and it will do much toward her elevation; but the law can not compel her to cultivate her physical and mental powers and take a stand as a free and inde- pendent being. All that, she has to do. She must investigate and take interest in everything on which the welfare of society depends, for the interest and happiness of every individual member, is connected with that of the whole. She must at once claim and exercise those rights and privileges with which the laws do not interfere, and it will aid her to obtain all the rest. She must, therefore, throw off that heavy yoke that, like a nightmare, weighs down her best energies—i.e., the fear of public opinion. * * * - The priests well know the influence and value of women when warmly engaged in any cause, and, therefore, as long as they can keep them steeped in superstitious darkness so long are they safe; and hence the horror and anathema against every woman that has intelligence, spirit, and moral courage to cast off the dark and op- pressive yoke of Superstition. But she must do it, or she will ever remain a slave; for, of all tyranny, that of Superstition is the greatest, and he is the most abject slave who tamely submits to its yoke. Woman, then, must cast it off as her greatest enemy; and the time, I trust, will come, when she will aid man to remove the politi- cal, civil, and religious evils that have swept over the earth like some malignant scourge, to lay waste and destroy so much of the beauty, harmony, and happiness of mankind; and the old fable of the fall of man through a woman, will be superseded by the glorious fact that she was instrumental in the elevation of the race toward a higher, nobler, and happier destiny. OAK KNOLL, DANVERs, MASS., March 8, 1888. My DEAR FRIEND: I thank thee for thy kind letter. It would be a great satis- faction to be able to be present at the fortieth anniversary of the Woman Suf- frage Association ; but, as that is not possible, I can only reiterate my hearty sym- pathy with the object of the association, and bid it take heart and assurance in view Conference of the Pioneers. 359 - of all that has been accomplished. There is no easy, royal road to a reform of this kind, but if the progress has been slow, there has been no step backward. The bar- riers which at first seemed impregnable in the shape of custom and prejudice, have been undermined, and their fall is certain. A prophecy of your triumph at no dis- tant day, is in the air; your opponents feel it and believe it. They know that yours is a gaining and theirs a losing cause. The work still before you demands on your part, great patience, steady persever- ance; a firm, dignified and self-respecting protest against the injustice of which you have so much reason to complain ; serene confidence which is not discouraged by temporary checks, nor embittered by hostile criticism, nor provoked to use any weapons of retort, which, like the boomerang, fall back on the heads of those who use them. You can afford, in your consciousness of right, to be as calm and courte- ous as the archangel Michael, who, we are told in Scripture, in his controversy with Satan himself, did not bring a railing accusation against him. A wise adaptation of means to ends is no yielding of principle, but care should be taken to avoid all such methods as have disgraced political and religious parties of the masculine sex. Con- tinue to make it manifest, that all which is pure and lovely and of good repute in womanhood, is entirely compatible with the exercise of the rights of citizenship, and the performance of the duties which we all owe to our homes and our country. Confident that you will do this, and with no doubt or misgiving as to your success, I bid you God-speed. I find I have written to the association rather than to thyself, but as one of the principal originators and most faithful supporters, it was very nat- ural that I should identify thee with it. I am, very truly thy friend, JOHN G. WHITTIER. To SUSAN B. ANTHON.Y. - No. 4 PARK ST., BOSTON, MASS., March 18, 1888. MY DEAR MISS ANTHONY: I am very much disappointed that neither Mrs. Sewall nor myself will be able to attend the Council of Women at Washington. This Council is very opportune to mark the progress which the emancipation of women has made in forty years. * * * What has been accomplished singe 1848 in the United States is so wonderful that it is difficult to induce persons who have grown up during that period, to believe the existence of such laws as oppressed their mothers. I congratulate the Council on the auspicious prospects of the new era on which we have entered. Victory is certain, though the war is not ended. Much depends on the women themselves. What they have done is known. It gives us good reason to think they will do more and better. And they will find more and more devoted friends and appreciaters of the other sex. Very truly yours, SAMUEL E. SEWALL. SYRACUSE, N. Y., March, 1888. DEAR MISS ANTHONY: I would like very much to attend the meeting at Washing- ton, but the infirmities of seventy years prevent. What a change in sentiment since I used to find it difficult to find a place, even in Massachusetts, where the people did not feel disgraced by the name of “Woman’s Rights.” I hope, as we become popular, we shall also become wise, and not imitate our brothers in governmental WrongS. Faithfully, - LUCY N. COLMAN. 360 International Council of Women. CouncIL BLUFFs, Iowa, March 19, 1888. DEAR Miss ANTHONY: I will be with you in spirit and take my place among the pioneers and greet you all, and in thought, go back over all those early years when I was your co-laborer, and with voice and pen gave my feeble aid to the cause in its infancy and days of great trial, ere it had grown so strong as to command the respect and attention of the whole world, as it does to-day. It needed not the letter you sent me from a friend of four-score years, to show that the Lily did a good work. Such testimony has come to me all down through the years since its first issue to the public. I know that all over the land there are hundreds of people who gained their first knowledge of the principles which underlie the woman's movement, by reading that little paper. You and Mrs. Stanton and Frances D. Gage and many others lent helping hands to me in that work; but be sure the little messenger went on its way with good tidings, scattering seed where our voices could not reach; and, all over the land, we see the fruit of that labor. The motive power that directed, guided, and controlled that enterprise was not strong or experienced; but it was such as was needed in the infancy of our cause, and made an impression where the stronger minds of to-day would, at that time, have failed. I gave my best years to the work. I am glad to know that at the head of the army of recruits that have rallied to the standard set up forty years ago, Mrs. Stanton, Lucy Stone, Antoinette Brown, and yourself still stand, the respected and honored leaders of the host—with armor on, ready for whatever further efforts and sacrifice may be asked of you. May you live to see and enjoy the full triumph of your labors In running my mind's eye over the list of prominent actors in the drama first brought upon the world’s stage near forty years ago, I miss many whose words were dear to us—many who, if living, would have honored seats in your Council. Lucretia Mott, Ernestine L. Rose, Frances D. Gage, Clarina I. H. Nichols, Paulina Wright Davis, Jane G. Swisshelm, Jane Pierson, Emily Clark, Mary C. Vaughan, and others—pioneers all— have finished their work upon earth and gone to their reward. Blessed be their memory ! May we not believe their spirits are hovering over this Council with benedictions of peace and love 2 And, in your Pioneer Conference, shall not all be remembered who gave their hearts and hands to the help of humanity, in the days when to be identified with the unpopular movement, was to take up a cross? Wishing you great success, both in Council and in sessions of Convention, I am, yours very sincerely, AMELIA BLOOMER. HYDE PARK, MASS., March 15, 1888. Miss Susan B. Anthony : MY DEAR FRIEND: My thanks for your invitation to the International Council and the Conference of Pioneers at Washington. You add, “If it be impossible for you to be with us in person, I hope you will be by letter, giving us a brief word of your Angelina’s and Sarah's earliest entrance upon their woman's work, and your hearty indorsement thereof.” As prior engagements elsewhere make if impossible for me to be with you at the time you name, I will gladly write out what you ask for.” º: * ºx. * + º: They felt profoundly that the subjugation of woman and that of the slave involved elementally the same principle—both robbed of rights—the slave of his self-right and thus of all rights, as all inhere in that and perish with it. The slave law, anni- * Part of Mr. Weld's letter is omitted, because the lives of the Grimke sisters have already been outlined by more than one of the Speakers of the Pioneers' Conference. Conference of the Pioneers. - 361 hilating the man, leaves the slave a mere thing, a chattel, the slaveholder's property. Woman, too, is robbed of her self-right in part, and largely of her relative rights. Throughout the subsequent career of the sisters, while the sole topic in their pub- lic lectures was the slave question, yet in their private intercourse and letters their testimony was frequent and uniform that man’s original subjugation of woman and his persistence in holding her thus subjugated, was and is, in spirit and principle, slaveholding, and that the wrong thus inflicted from time immemorial, has been the foster father and mother of all other forms of human oppression. Inklings of this testimony to the equality of woman's rights with man's, appear variously in the sayings and doings of both sisters ever afterward. We preface the first special public instance of this with the following statement: In the spring of 1837 the Woman's Anti-Slavery Society of New York city, issued a call for a general anti-slavery convention of American women, to be held there May 9, 10, 11, 12. Some three hundred women, representing ten States, were enrolled as mem- bers, and six subjects were reported for their consideration. The first on the list was “An Appeal to the Women of the Nominally Free States.” This appeal was presented by Angelina Grimke, the chairman of the committee appointed therefor, and was published by the convention. That pamphlet has been long out of print, but I find in Mrs. Birney’s memorial of the sisters Grimke this comment upon it. She says: “The appeal is made chiefly to woman's tenderest and holiest feelings, but enough is said of her rights, to show whither Angelina’s own reflections were leading her. A passage or two may be quoted as examples. ‘Every citizen should feel an interest in the political concerns of his country, because the honor and well- being of every class is bound up in its political government and laws.’ ‘Are we aliens because we are women 2 Are we bereft of citizenship because we are the mothers, wives, and daughters of a mighty people º Ours is a great moral work.” * Wisdom crieth without, Whosoever is of a willing heartlet him bring an offering.’ * Shall woman refuse her response to the call 2 Was she created to be a helpmeet for man, his sorrows to divide, his joys to share, and his toils to lighten by her willing aid, and shall she refuse to aid him with her labor and her counsel, too, at such a time as this 2''' Later in the convention Angelina offered the following resolution: “Resolved, That as certain rights and duties are common to all moral beings, the time has come for woman to move in that sphere to which Providence has assigned her, and no longer remain satisfied in the circumscribed limits with which corrupt custom and a perverted application of Scripture have encircled her; therefore, it is the duty of woman, and the province of woman, to plead the cause of the oppressed, and to do all that she can by her voice, her pen, and her example, to overthrow the horrible system of American slavery.” The resolution was sustained by the mover and by Lucretia Mott. Amendments were offered by Mary Grew and Mrs. A. L. Cox, which called forth an animated debate respecting the rights and duties of women. As the convention declined to pass the amendments proposed, twelve of the members entered their names upon the records in protest against the views expressed respect- ing the rights of woman. At the close of the convention, the sisters, at the invita- tion of the Boston Female Anti-slavery Society, began their labors in Massachusetts. Early in June a Massachusetts anti-slavery convention was held in Boston. Mrs. Birney, in her memorial, says: “ In writing about the convention to Jane Smith, Angelina first touches upon the dawning feeling on the woman question. She says: “At friend Chapman's, where we spent a social evening, I had a long talk with the brethren on the rights of women, and found a very general sentiment that it is time 24 362 International Council of Women. our fetters were broken. Lydia Maria Child and Maria Chapman strongly supported this view; indeed, very many seemed to think a new order of things must come. Now, my dear friend, I feel it is not the cause of the slave only that we plead, but the cause of woman as a moral, responsible being.’” “ * * I see that I have overlooked one of your requests; that is, my “hearty indorsement” of their views touching the equality of woman’s rights with man's. In Mrs. Bir- ney’s book I find the following extract of one of my letters to Angelina, written in August, 1837: “As to the rights and the wrongs of women, it is an old theme with me; it was the first subject I ever discussed. In a little debating society, when a boy, I took the ground that sex neither qualifies nor disqualifies for the discharge of any functions, mental, moral, or spiritual; that there is no reason why woman should not make laws, administer justice, sit in the chair of state, plead at the bar or in the pulpit, if she has the requisite qualifications.” What I advocated in boyhood I advocate now—that...woman in every particular shares equally with man, rights and responsibilities. I doubt not that the foregoing is a sufficiently “hearty indorse- ment’’ to pass muster. Now, with exultant God-speed to you all, as you sit in your International Council and Conference of Pioneers, in your grand millennial work now fast rounding on to its jubilee, - I am, dear friend, faithfully yours, - THEODORE D. WELD. SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO, March 18, 1888. My DEAR MISS ANTHONY: I am very sorry that unavoidable circumstances will prevent me from attending your anniversary meeting. It would afford me the sin- cerest and most heartfelt pleasure to join you and your worthy associates in com- memorating the historic convention of women which assembled at Seneca Falls forty years ago. I remember it well, for I had espoused the cause of woman's enfranchisement the year before, after reading Harriet Martineau's chapter on the “Political Non-existence of Women,” in her book on “Society in America.”. * * * The work done is simply amazing, and it can not fail to inspire with renewed faith and fresh courage every friend of the great cause. All honor to its pioneers, a few of whom yet remain to share the blessed fruition of their heroic endeavors. “The good can well afford to wait; Give ermined knaves their hour of Crime; Ye have the future grand and great, The safe appeal of truth to time.” Wishing great success to your Convention. - I am very faithfully yours, GEO. W. JULIAN. Dr. Mary F. Thomas, one of the eight who were graduated in the first class from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsyl- vania, writes: My thoughts go back to a Sabbath afternoon in June, 1836, when the attention of three young sisters was first especially called to the inequality of woman's wages, and when they determined to “bear testimony” against this wrong. To this end we attended school lyceums in our neighborhood, and talked on these subjects, often against ridicule for our silly notions. But we did not realize from our untrained standpoint what was the true basis of the political inferiority of women until Sep- . Conference of the Pioneers. - 363 tember, 1845, when our now sainted Lucretia Mott attended the Yearly Meeting at Salem, Ohio. After the meeting some young people prevailed on Mrs. Mott to speak on “Woman's Education.” She urged us to acquaint ourselves with the laws, and to ask for equal political rights. One of the girls referred to died a few years since, having done all she could to carry out in Ohio their early resolution. The second is a physician in Philadelphia (Dr. Hannah Longshore, present at the Council and referred to elsewhere) who has proved the sincerity of her pledge by a life devoted to the elevation of women. The third is your correspondent, a pioneer physician still in the harness, who does not expect a release from labor until the equal rights of all are acknowledged, unless sooner called from work to reward. MARY F. THOMAS. RICHMOND, IND., March 22, 1888. Letter from Mary T. Gray, of Wyandotte, Kans., giving a brief sketch of the work of Clarina I. Howard Nichols. Among the most novel sights at the Territorial Constitutional Convention,” where the presence of women was rare, was the figure of Mrs. C. I. H. Nichols. At the right hand of the speaker, and a step lower than his platform, beside a table, sat day after day this slender, middle-aged woman, of spare but not ungraceful figure, of clear searching eyes and a high brow shaded with dark curls. Coming in daily on horseback from her home, three miles distant, one found her always at her table, sitting there patiently through the heat of the scorching July days, sometimes knit. ting, but more often busy with pencil or pen, with her clear eyes ever on the alert for the business before the house. She sat there, the unsolicited, self-appointed guardian of the laws for Kansas women. She was poor, yet asked no pay and never received any, yet every woman in the State of Kansas to-day is somewhat in her debt for our liberal laws—for the rights and privileges of holding property, trans- acting business in their own name, and participating in the elections and offices under our school system in advance of the constitutions of other States. She asked : (1.) Equal educational privileges in all the colleges and institutions of learn- ing fostered and controlled by the State. (2.) Equal rights in the formation and conduct of the common schools. (3.) An equal right for the mothers with the fathers to the custody and control of their offspring. (4.) The right of the wife to hold and accumulate property, and sue and be sued, as if sole. No other State has, so far as we can learn, the provision that it is the right of the wife to sue in defense of the common property, or “community fund.” For want of such provision, wives have been compelled in other States, to have guardians appointed over insane hus- bands to defend interests, which they were competent to protect without such expen- diture. * * * This appeal for constitutional provisions, defining and specifying, was a novel and successful method of securing permanent measures, which no leg- islative body could repeal. Two years later, Mrs. Nichols discovered a law specify- ing that, in the settlement of an estate, the widow should have one-third, provided she did not elect to take, under the provisions of an earlier date, one-half. She also found a law giving the property of a child, who should die without a will, to the father if living; if he were dead the brothers and sisters took the property to the exclusion of the mother. These two facts she wrote out, and sent them for publi- *Held at Wyandotte, Kansas, July 1859, to prepare the Constitution, under which Kansas desired to enter the Union as a State. 364 International Council of Women. cation in the Topeka Commonwealth and the Wyandotte Gazette. Both laws were amended by the next legislature. You have not time to hear of the hours of pains- taking labor she gave; or the slights, rebuffs, and mortifications she endured as a self-appointed delegate to a convention that had not wanted her—for the sake of the women who did not know they wanted more than they had * * * Not long since, the tireless worker for the world fell asleep. Her memory will be kept green by all who knew and loved her. The majority of Kansas women have never heard her name. To most of you it is to-day heard for the first time. Yet she was one of the brave army of pioneers which forty years ago began the work which makes this Convention possible to-day; which has gained for women recognition in wages, in work, in schools and colleges. It is the hands of the tireless, faithful pioneers, that have made the path smooth for our daughters. It is because they braved rebuff and sneer and scorn and falsehood, that this Convention is to-day considered respectable. Their hearts have ached, their nights been sleepless, their paths rough that to-day’s success has been achieved. God give them happiness and long life—God bless the pioneers. HAPPY THOUGHT COTTAGE, NORTH ADAMS, MASS., March 19, 1888. To the Pioneer Advocates of Suffrage for Women, in Conference Assembled: DEAR FRIENDS: I regret very much my inability to be with you at your gathering. I know of no other movement, having in view the amelioration of mankind, with which for forty years I have been in such sympathy, and to which, with my own approval, I have been so strongly linked, as to that for the emancipation and enfran- chisement of woman. * * * Woman is entitled to have her humanhood and not her sexhood acknowledged by public opinion, by custom, by social observance, by fashion, by religious influence, by law, and by all the authority of the State as the predominating and guiding force for the evolvement, education, and culture of her personality “ # * Dear friends, may you whose heads are whitening under time’s bleaching, have a pleasant and profitable conference. How in memory I go back to the day when I read the call and subsequently the proceedings of that gather- ing you are commemorating! # * * I saw clearly then, what a prolonged con- test would have to be waged, in order to do away with the crime of woman’s enslave- ment, and I do urge upon you who have gone through the conflicts since that day, to impress upon those who will take up the work when you have done with it, these ideas: (1.) That woman is human, and therefore human rights belong to her. (2.) That her rights can not be justly qualified to man's advantage and to her disad- vantage, because of any difference between his physical and her physical organiza- tion. (3.) That her rights, originating in her personality, as do his in his personal- ity, rest on the same basis as do his, and that therefore they must in the end, stand or fall together. (4.) Urge upon them that they courageously claim to be acknowl- edged by constitutional and statutory authority, to be equal with men before the law everywhere. - I am your fellow-citizen, JAMES C. JACKSON. Miss ANTHON.Y. Mrs. Elizabeth B. Chase, of Rhode Island, who up to the last moment expected to be with us to-day, sent us the following tribute to one of our earliest and ablest advocates of equal rights for all: The death of Abby Kelly Foster, which occurred less than eighteen months ago, - has removed from our midst one of the most remarkable women of the nineteenth - Conference of the Pioneers. 365 century. And yet, in the present generation, there are, doubtless, many persons even among active, intelligent women who know very little of the life she lived and the work she accomplished in the interests of humanity. The opening years of the anti-slavery conflict, led by William Lloyd Garrison and his few adherents, found her a modest, quiet, Quaker maiden, conscientiously performing her duties as the teacher of a Monthly Meeting school for “Friends’” children, in the town of Lynn, Mass. She read the thrilling pages of the Liberator and listened to the impassioned speeches of the early advocates of immediate eman- cipation, until the iron of the slave-holding system entered into her soul never to be withdrawn until the last fetter was broken. With a clear insight she saw what statesmen and theologians failed to perceive, that slavery in this land was the Nation's guilt, and that the supporters of the system were the whole people, while the American Church, by its silence, by its fellowship, by its defenses and apolo- gies, was the stronghold of this great iniquity. The hammer on the auction-block, the clank of the slave's chain, and the slave-mother's cry, sounded ever in her ears; and her conscience, alive to the slightest intimation of wrong-doing, bade her wash her own hands clean of this foulest of stains. Listening to the inner voice she be- gan her labor in the cause of the slave by devoting half her salary to its service. But ere long, impelled by an impulse she could not resist, she gave up her school and went forth, single-handed and alone, to raise her voice in earnest pleading be- fore all the people, that they should let the slaves go free. Long afterward, in relating her experience, in a private conversation, I heard her say: “It was as though I saw my neighbor's house in flames and knew that the lives of the children Were in peril. I should rush into the street and cry ‘fire fire l’ and do all that lay in my power for their rescue. So it was when I heard the cries of the slave.” * * * - But the pulpit and the press were against her. First, because she was a woman, and, second, because she attacked the slave system with the faithfulness of the prophet Nathan, who declared to the erring king of Israel, “Thou art the man.” Mobs assailed her. Scandal sought to crush her. No epithets were too vile to be cast upon her by New England respectability. The Society of Friends disowned her. Had the Puritan methods of persecution prevailed at that time, she would have shared with the early Quaker women in Massachusetts, scourgings, imprisonment, and, perhaps, death on the gallows. But there are tortures more keen and bitter than bodily inflictions, and these fell thick and fast on her devoted head. * * * But she had a high and holy mission, and she pursued it cheerfully and bravely, seldom speaking of the obstacles in her way. * * * When the American Anti- Slavery Society needed a printing-press, and was otherwise in peril for lack of funds, Abby Kelly, who had received from her mother a legacy of a thousand dollars, poured it all into the treasury of the society, being glad that she had it to bestow. For many years she made it a part of her duty to collect the money by which the Society was largely supported, asking nothing for herself and her incessant labors. After her marriage to Stephen S. Foster, who was a man of extraordinary power as an anti-slavery orator, and had almost suffered martyrdom in the cause, she left her public work temporarily to become the most exact and careful of home-makers. No household duty was ever neglected in that home, and the hospitality exercised by her husband and herself, included not only a large circle of friends, but welcomed and protected the flying fugitive from bondage. When her only child was old enough to be entrusted to another's care, she took her to New Hampshire to her husband's sister, and with a heart almost breaking at 366 International Council of Women. - the separation, she went forth again on the mission to which she believed herself called. On her journey homeward she met a friend, who exclaimed: “How can you leave your baby to go out again lecturing 2 '' And she replied, almost choking with emotion: “For the sake of the mothers who are robbed of all their children.’’ For many years, she alternated between her domestic duties and attendance upon anti-slavery meetings, often traveling with her husband in such service. When the war came, and the abolition of slavery became a military necessity, and was thus wiped out in blood, no one rejoiced more than she, while entirely disapproving of war, from which she, and all other Abolitionists, would gladly have saved our nation, would the nation have listened to their appeals and followed their counsels. The women of this land owe to this woman more than to any other human being, a debt of gratitude for the doors she opened for them to enter; for the courage and the conscientiousness with which, amid persecution and reviling, she made the way clear for them to walk safely, where she encountered what to them would seem insurmountable difficulties. Her sympathies and her strong influence were given to all reforms—temperance, social purity, woman suffrage, and whatever conduces to human welfare, and to all she contributed the uncompromising support of her earnest, unwavering spirit. Let her name stand high on our record of love and honor. BosTON, March 28, 1888. MY DEAR LUCY STONE: * * * It has happened that I did not see, until now, that among the features of the International Council, is to be a gathering of the pioneers upon the platform. I have grieved to be unable to share in the delibera- tions and profits of the Council personally. But I feel as if it were almost to lose my identity, altogether, not to be named among you as one of the early Ohio workers, and one of the “present and accounted for,” at the Massillon, Syracuse, and Cleve- land conventions, as well as standard-bearer of the cause on the lecture platforms of Cleveland, Boston, and other cities. * * * Therefore, I wish now simply to be counted in among those of the dear old friends who survive, as they all do, I am sure, “here or there;” to dream that I feel the old-time thrill of the hand-clasp, the magnetism of the kindred aim, and catch the “all hail” of the later recruits, and bid them the heartiest “ God-speed; ” and so be on record once more among the faithful before I go hence. Faithfully yours, CAROLINE. M. SEVERANCE. 164 WEST FORTY-FIFTH STREET, NEW YORK, March 17, 1888. Miss Susan B. Anthony: DEAR FRIEND: Feeble health will plead my excuse for not attending the Inter- national Council, but it must not hinder me from sending you my warm congratu- lations. I may fairly account myself among the few who welcomed the Conven- tion of 1848, and who saw in it the beginning of one of the grandest revolutions in the history of the human race. In the conflict for the admission of women to full participation in the anti-slavery societies, a few years earlier, I had taken an active part, and calm reflection upon the principles involved in that issue, led me to see that there could be no middle ground between the conventionalism of that period in respect to woman, and her admission to the exercise of every political right. I was therefore prepared to respond fully and promptly to the demands made at Seneca Falls, and, in spite of the ridicule heaped upon the convention and its authors, I, published the proceedings in the newspaper * then under my care. * * * - * The Anti-Slavery Bugle, at Salem, Ohio. Conference of the Pioneers. 367 God bless the brave and noble workers, every one, say I, and give them the cour- age and patience to carry on their cause to its final triumph. The welfare and advancement of our common humanity, and the glory of the Republic, are involved in it. The struggle has proved longer and harder than I anticipated, but the end, on that account, will be all the more glorious. Yours, in hope and confidence, OLIVER JOHNSON. CAMBRIDGE, MAss., March 17, 1888. DEAR Miss ANTHONY : Absence from home has delayed my reply to your letter. Thank you for your invitation to the celebration at Washington, but I shall be so engaged at that time that it will be out of my power to attend. Those who took part in the early convention have certainly seen great results follow. In regard to education and general legislation, the greater part of that for which we asked, has been gained. In regard to woman suffrage, the progress has been slower, as was natural; yet this progress has been constantly accelerated, so that the last ten years have shown more visible results than the previous thirty. Equal suffrage for the sexes is, in my judgment, a necessary part of the evolution of human society. I expect that it will be attended, like all the great enlargements of the suffrage, by temporary mistakes, inconveniences, and drawbacks, as well as by great and permanent benefits. But it is as sure to come as is the earth to roll round on its axis. - Yours very truly, THOMAS WENTwo RTH HIGGINSON. From one of the originators of Sorosis, and, next to the sainted Alice Cary, its first president—Mrs. Charlotte B. Wil- bour, now residing in Paris. MY DEAR MISS ANTHON.Y: The invitation which I have just read induces retro- spection, excusable in one who distinctly remembers the convention to which this Council offers an anniversary. For I am no convert to the faith of the equality of the sexes before the law, or to the larger possibilities of our woman nature. No, I was born in the church, of parents who recognized my right to be all that the human being, man or woman, may be, without legal hindrance. My birth membership of the meeting may explain the fact that I am so much a laggard in the rear of the army, but I always note with pride and satisfaction the efficient zeal of the converts, and often ask if they are not the more fortunate of the crusaders. Born for to-day, after the old-fashioned stiles and fences have been, perhaps, clumsily jostled down, but levelled, nevertheless, and the practical results of agitation, protestation, and path- making have been achieved, and the old methods recorded for the warning, sugges- tion, and encouragement of these better educated and more evenly cultivated women Of this hour. - The brave philanthropy of the justice-seeking women of the Seneca Falls Conven- tion of 1848 will receive the grateful recognition of the independent workers in - departments of labor and skilled service conquered for women since that date. The women of 1888 have come out of their rose gardens to pay their willing tribute to the grafters and seed-sowers of 1848 . In this land of Egypt, country of degraded women, the elevation of our American women seems so great that my hands lift themselves in amazement at a contrast so terrible, and my heart is filled with rejoicing and exaltation as I number the steps that even forty years of faithful effort have cut in the stony mountain of error an prejudice. In accepting invitations from the officials of Upper Egypt, my daughte - T - 36s International Council of Women. and I make request to be presented to the ladies of the harem, and the majority of them say to us that they never before conversed with foreign ladies. We find it very difficult to select subjects for conversation of which they know anything. The atmosphere of custom and religion is too heavy for the white wings of the bearer of glad tidings of good-will to women. The black mantle of the prophet adorns the man and is the funeral-pall of the woman. - . But to my country I turn in hope and cry, all hail to the breaking day in the new land, where the men and women shall stand together in religion, in society, in the family, and in the State. And while you, my good sisters, are hastening on this day of equality, I say God speed you. - CHARLOTTE. B. WILBOUR. On the Nile, Upper Egypt, Africa. Mathilde F. Wendt sends from New York her greetings to the Council, and begs that the work of Madame Annekë may be remembered, since it was she who contributed so much to the German Revolution of 1848. In that year Carl Schurz and this brave woman, forced to leave their Fatherland, sought in America the freedom denied them at home. To him, our nation opened the way to every honor, save only the ighest; to her it denied even the exercise of the natural right of self-government.* * For Madame Anneke see “History of Woman Suffrage.” Vol. I., 571; Vol. II., 374; 393 ; Vol. III., 646. SATURDAY, MARCH 31, 1888. EVENING SESSION. Po L IT I ca L. co ND IT I o N s. Invocation by Mrs. Ormiston Chant. Mrs. STANTON. The first speaker of the evening is Helen Gardener, who is to give us an address on the Brain. You know the last stronghold of the enemy is scientific ; men have decided that we must not enter the colleges and study very hard ; must not have the responsibility of government laid on our heads, because our brains weigh much less than the brains of men. Dr. Hammond, of New York, has published several very elaborate articles in the Popular Science Month/y to prove this fact. But Miss Gardener has spent about fourteen months in investigation, and has conferred with twenty able specialists upon the subject, and will give us to-night the result of her investigation. She will show to us that it is impossible to prove any of the positions that Dr. Hammond has maintained. SEx IN BRAIN. - HELEN GARDENER. The political conditions of woman are very greatly influenced to-day by what is taught to her and about her by those two con- servative moulders of public opinion—clergymen and physicians. Our law- makers have long since ceased to merely sneer at the simple claim of human rights by one-half of humanity, and for refuge they have flown to priest and practitioner, who do not fail them in this their hour of great tribulation. It is true that men, most of whom never enter a church, have grown somewhat ashamed to press the theological arguments against the equality of the sexes, and to these the medical argument has become an ever-present help in their time of trouble. - In the early days woman was under the absolute sway of club and fist. Then came censer and gown, Swinging hell in the perfumed depths of the one and hiding in the folds of the other thumb-screw and fagot for the woman who dared to think. At last the theory of the primal curse upon her head has grown weaker. Mankind struggles to be less brutal and more just. Manly men are beginning to blush when they hear repeated the well-worn fable of the fall of man through woman's crime and her inferiority of posi- tion and opportunity, justified by priest and pleader, because of legends in- herited from barbarians—mental deformities worthy of their parentage. When religious influence and dogma began to close their terrors, legal en- actments were slowly modified in woman’s favor and hell went out of fashion. Then Conservatism, Ignorance, and Egotism, in dismay and terror, took counsel together and called in medical Science, still in its infancy, to aid in 370 International Council of Women. - staying the march of progress which is inevitable to civilization and so neces- sary to anything like a real republic. Equality of opportunity began to be denied to woman, for the first time, upon natural and so-called scientific grounds. She was pronounced physically and mentally incapable, because of certain anatomical conditions, and she must be prevented—for her own good and that of the race here—from competition with her mental and physical superiors. It was no longer her soul, but her body, that needed saving from herself. Her thirst for knowledge the clergy declared had already damned the souls of a very large majority of mankind—in a hereafter known only to them. The same vicious tendency, the doctors echoed, will be the ruin of the physical bodies of the race in this world, as we are prepared to prove. The Case began to look hopeless again. Opportunity must be denied, these doc- tors Say, because capacity does not exist. Where capacity seems to exist, it is, it must be, at the expense of individual health and future maternal capa- bilities. As a person, she has no status with these consistent believers in “equal rights to all mankind.” As a potential mother only, can she hope for con- sideration either by religious or medical theorist. This has been a difficult Combination to meet. Few who cared to contest their verdict, possessed the bravery to fearlessly face the religious dictators, and fewer still had the ana- tomical and anthropological information to risk a fight on a field which as- Sumed to be held by those who based all of their arguments upon scientific facts, collected by microscope and scales and reduced to unanswerable sta- tistics. º The priest, reinforced by the doctor, promised a long and bitter struggle, on new grounds, to those who fought for simple justice to the individual, aside from her sex relations; who wished for neither malediction nor mercy; those who claim only the right of a unit to enjoy the common heritage un- trammeled by superstition and artificial difficulties. They do not ask to be helped—only not to be hindered. They had hailed science as their friend and ally; and behold, pseudo-science adopted theories, invented Statistics, and published personal prejudices as demonstrated fact. All this has done a vast deal of harm to the cause of woman. Educators, theorists, and politicians readily accept the data and statistics of prominent physicians, and, in good faith, make them a basis of action, while the victims of their misinformation have been helpless. It is, therefore, very important to learn, if possible, just how far medical science and anthropology have really discovered demonstrable natural sex differences in the brains of men and women, and how far the usual theories advanced are gratuitous assumptions, founded upon legend and fed by mental habit and personal egotism. I began an investigation into this matter a little while ago by questioning - - - Political Conditions. 371 the arguments and logic of the medical pseudo-scientists from their own basis of facts. I ended by questioning the facts themselves, upon the evidence furnished me by leading members of the profession, some of whom are known in this country and abroad as leaders in original investigation as brain stu- dents and anatomists. None of these gentlemen knew the aim or motive of my inquiries, and they gave me all the information to be had on this subject without bias and quite freely. The specialists and brain students to whom my questions were submitted, were of widely different religious beliefs, which, of course, colored their theories as well as their motives, either consciously or unconsciously. But the profession has reason to be proud of the ability of most of these men, no less than of their sincerity and willingness to confess to ignorance of facts where proof was lacking. The abler the man the more willing was he to do this. One or two tried to explain, and, as it seemed to me, to force an agreement between scientific facts which they did possess, and their inherited belief in “revelation.” Others, who did not themselves recognize it, performed the same mental gymnastics from mere force of habit, and gave a black eye to their facts in preserving a blind eye to their faith. But in the following re- Sults are to be found the opinions of eminent medical men, some of whom are Roman Catholic, some Protestant, and some of the negative systems of re- ligion. So far as I know, not one is a believer in “Woman Suffrage,” nor even in the more radical but less comprehensive measures for her development. Not one, who touched directly upon the subject, believed in sex equality in its entirety or had not personal prejudice and long-cherished sentiments opposed to it, if his reason approved. By some of them this was frankly stated, even while giving facts in her favor. Not more than one, so far as I know, is “agnostic” in religion or a believer in evolution in its entirety. I have mentioned these latter points, because I found in this line of inves- tigation, as in all others, that a man's religious leanings inevitably color and modify all of his opinions, and govern his entire mental outlook. They even add bitterness to his “jalop” and fizz in his “seltzer.” If he abso- lutely believe in the “Garden of Eden'' story he deals with “Adam ” as a creature after “God’s own heart and in his image,” and therefore capable and deserving of all opportunity and development for and because of him- self, and to promote his own happiness. “Eve,” of course, receives due attention as a physical, anatomical specimen, “with intuitions ''-a mere bone or rib of contention, as it were, between man and man. The more orthodox the man the bonier the rib. The more literal and consistent his faith the less likely is he to deal with woman as an intellectual being, capable of and entitled to the same or as liberal, mental, social, and financial oppor- - tunities or rights as are universally conceded to be the birthright of man, and quite beyond farther controversy in his case. Evidence in her favor must be overwhelming, indeed, then, which can not be evaded if an inves- 372 International Council of Women. tigator starts out handicapped with the theory of “revelation” as a part of his mental equipment, and with the “sphere of woman" formulated for him by the ancient Hebrews. I went to the men whom the doctors themselves told me were the best authority to be found on the subject of brain anatomy and microscopy. One of these men, Dr. E. C. Spitzka, of New York, was referred to by physicians of all Schools of practice as undoubtedly the best informed man in America, and second to none in the world, in this branch of the profession. They, one and all, told me that what he could not tell me himself on this subject, or could not tell me where to find, could not be of the slightest importance. I have been asked to tell you just what I started out to learn, and how far I Succeeded. But before I do this it may not be out of place to tell you an anecdote of my experience in this undertaking : I went personally to about twenty of the leading physicians of New York with my questions. I had them Submitted in other ways to many more in this and other cities. I got written communications from the Old World as well as the New. Nearly every one of these twenty, after very kindly telling me what he himself knew and what he believed on the subject, referred me to the same man as the final appeal; but not one of them was willing to introduce me to him. They would introduce me to anybody and everybody else, but they did not like to risk sending me to him. He was, they said, utterly impatient of ignorance, and might treat me with scant courtesy. He would very likely tell me flatly that he could not waste time on so trivial a matter—that I and everybody else ought to know all about “sex in brain.” - Now, this is a secret—I would not have it get out for a good deal. It took me a long while to get my courage up to go to that man without an in- troduction—a thing I did not do with any of the others. I finally, with fear and trembling, made up my mind to learn what he knew on this subject or perish in the attempt. So I took my life in my hands, put on my best gown—I had previously discovered that even brain anatomists are subject to the Spell of good clothes—and went. I fully expected to be reduced to mere pulp before I left ; but he listened quite patiently, asked me a few ques- tions as to why I had come to him ; told me to read him my questions ; asked me sharply, “Who wrote those questions?” I said meekly, “I did.” He looked at me critically, wrote something on a card, and dismissed me. I was uncertain whether, he had been so kind in his manner, because he con- sidered me a harmless lunatic or not. Once in the street I read the card, I was to call again when he could give me more time. I went not once, but many times. I devoted some months to brain anat- omy and anthropology. In his laboratory he had brains from those of a mouse to those of the largest whale on record. He showed me the peculiar- ities of brains as shown by microscope and scales. He looked up points in foreign journals to which I had not access. In short, he did all he could to Political Conditions. 373 aid me ; and he said that no such investigation as I was trying to learn about had ever yet been made, although no fair record of the difference of sex in brain, of which we hear so much, could possibly be made without it. He was delightfully frank, earnest, and thoroughly honest. He knew—and, what is better, he was willing to tell—where knowledge stopped and guessing began; a point sadly confused, I found, by even prominent members of the profession. “I do not know,” was a hard sentence to get from a doctor so long as he was under the impression that others of his profession would know. “I do not know ; nobody knows,” came freely enough from the man who was sure of the boundaries of investigation, who recognized the vast difference between theories and proof. From him, and through him, I collected material that is of intense interest and importance to woman in this stage of the movement for her elevation. It is only right that I say here that I am of opinion that he does not him- self believe in the equality of the sexes, but he is too thoroughly scientific to allow his hereditary bias to color his statements of facts on this or any subject. In the hands of a man who has arrived at that point of mental poise and dignity, our case is safe, no matter what his sentiments may be. Such men do not go to their emotions for premises when it comes to a state- ment of scientific facts. There are writers on this subject who do. As you all know, any statement calmly and persistently made is reasonably sure to be accepted as true, even by its victims. Frequency of iteration passes as proof. Even thoughtful men, after spending years of time in trying to explain why a thing is true, often end with the discovery that it is not true, after all. We are all familiar with the story of the wrangle of the philosophers as to why a vessel containing water weighed no more with a fish weighing a pound in it than it did after the fish was removed. After long and acrimonious debate over the principle of philosophy involved, some one bethought him to weigh them, and, of course, discovered that no unfamiliar principle was involved, since it was a simple misstatement as to facts. The assumption of “ divine rights” by kings and priests stood as unques- tioned facts for centuries by those who were the victims of both. The “ divine right '' of men rests still on the same bare-faced fraud, and is sim- ply the last of this interesting trinity to die, and it naturally dies hard, as its fellows did. If a charlatan loudly asserts that he can do a certain thing, no matter how unlikely that thing is, if he insists that he has done it often, he will find many believers who will spend much time in an attempt to ex- plain how he does it, while only the few will think to question first if he does it. - Upon this basis of calm assumption on the one side, and credulous accept- ance on the other, has grown up a very general belief that there are great 374 International Council of Women. Sexes of the human race ; that these differences are well known to the medi- cal practitioner or anatomist, and that they plainly indicate inferiority of capacity in the female brain, which is structural, while, strangely enough, no one argues that this is the case in the lower animals. It therefore occurred to me to question—admitting that the microscope and scales really do show the differences to exist in adults—whether it would not be fair to assume, at least, that they are not natural and necessary sex differences, but that they are due to difference of opportunity and environment, and, under like con- ditions, would be produced between members of the same sex; that since this superiority of brain in the male sex is said to appear in the human race only, where alone, in all nature, Superior opportunities and environments are held as a sex right and condition by the males, that the so-called “superior- ity of structure” is simply better development of the equally capable but restricted brain of the other sex. I proposed to test this by an appeal to the brains of infants. And my as- sumption, although not new, appeared to be borne out by the accepted, though unproven, theory, that the brains of the men and women are nearer alike the lower we go into the human scale. This assumption is clearly based upon the idea that where the mental opportunities of the men and women are nearer equal the physical results are also similar. Indeed, Topinard plainly states this fact in his Anthropology. He says: “The reason that the brain of woman is lighter than that of man is that she has less cerebral activity to exercise in her sphere of duty. In former times it was relatively larger in the department of Lozère, because then the woman and man mutually shared the burdens of the daily labor. The truth is that the weight of the brain increases with the use we make of it.” Since women are not given diversified and stimulating mental employment, they can not be ex- pected to show the results of such training on the brain itself. I was started on my work in this matter by several articles written by the boldest of the medical men in this country, who is the leader of the medical party which claims to be opposed to the educational and political advance- ment of women because of the inevitable injury to her physical consitution. The writings of such a man, aided by the circulation and prestige of the leading journals of the country, which publish them as authoritative, must inevitably influence school directors, voters, and legislators, and go far to crystallize the belief that facts are well known to the medical profession, with which it would be dangerous to trifle, when the truth is that the posi- tive knowledge on the subject is not sufficient at this moment to form even an intelligent guess upon. In spite of this fact the well-known physician of whom I speak, Dr. Wm. A. Hammond, reiterates in these articles all of the old, and adds one or two new, arguments to prove that woman should not be allowed to develop what brain she has, because she possesses very little and even that little is of inferior quality. Political Conditions. - 375 Professor Romanes, who is said by many to stand second only to Herbert Spencer in his branch of science, has also recently published a very exten- sive paper on mental differences of the sexes and the proper education of woman, which is, unfortunately, but most likely honestly, based upon this same assumption, under the belief that it was a proven fact. His paper has been very widely copied in spite of its extreme length, and the fact that the same journals “absolutely can not find space ’’ for even a moderately long one on the other side. The editors say, “The public is not interested in it’’—that is, in its correction. I mention these two men not because they are peculiar in, but because they are honored representatives of, the so-called scientific school of objectors to human equality, and claim to base the right of male Supremacy upon important scientific facts. Of course all this is an old assumption and as such has been dealt with before. But Dr. Hammond now boldly asserts that these differences are easily discoverable by microscope and scales, and that they are natural, neces- sary sex differences. He claims: (1.) That woman’s brain is inferior to man’s in size and quality, and, therefore, in possibility. (2.) That these marks of inferiority are natural and potential, and not produced by environment. (3.) That they are easily recognizable in the brain mass itself. (4.) That in consequence of these natural organic and fundamental differences the female brain is incapable of, first, accuracy; second, Sustained or abstract thought ; third, unbiased judgment (judicial fairness); fourth, the accom- plishment of any really first-class or original work in the fields of Science, art, politics, invention, or even literature. He points out the great danger to woman herself, and to the race, as her children, if she is allowed to attempt those things for which the structure of her brain shows her to be incapaci- tated. From this outlook it is easy to see that the non-professional voter, the school director, and the legislator might really feel it to be his duty to pro- tect woman against her own ambition. It is in this way that the assertions of such men can, and do, cause the greatest injury to woman. There are a number of other indictments ; but for the present let us examine these. First, in the matter of size, the doctor concedes that the relative size and weight of the brain in the sexes is about the same, slightly in woman's favor, which he says does not count; although, when he finds this same difference between men, as between higher and lower races, he argues that it does count for a great deal. But in the dilemma to which this seemed to reduce him in proving his case, he says: “Numerous observations show beyond doubt that the intellectual power does not depend upon the weight of the brain relative to that of the body so much as it depends upon absolute brain weight.” Now, if this were the case, an elephant would out-think any of us, and the whale, whose intellectual achievements have never been looked upon as abso- 376 International Council of Women. ----, lutely incendiary (if we except Jonah's friend), would rank the greatest man on record, and have brain enough left to furnish material for a fair-sized female seminary. The average human male brain is said to weigh from 1,300 to 1,400 grammes, and even a very young whale furnishes 2,312 grammes of “intel- lect-producing substance,” as the doctor felicitously terms it, while the brain of a large whale weighed in 1883 tipped the beam at 6,700 grammes. Truly, then, if absolute brain weight and not relative weight is the test, here was a “mute inglorious Milton,” indeed. Almost any elephant is several Cuviers in disguise, or perhaps an entire medical faculty. The doctor says : “The female brain, however, is not only smaller than that of man, but it is different in structure, and this fact involves much more as regards the character of the mental faculties than does the element of size.” Again he says: “ Thus accurate measurements show that the anterior portion of the brain, comprising the frontal lobes, in which the highest intellectual faculties reside, is much more developed in man than in woman, and this not only as regards its size, but its convolutions also. Now, the part of the brain which is especially concerned in the evolution of mind is the gray matter, and this is increased or diminished in accordance with the number and complexity of the convolutions. The frontal lobes contain a greater amount of gray cortical matter than any other part of the brain, and they are, as we have seen, larger in man than in woman.” Accepting these sweeping statements for the moment—although many of them are questioned by the highest authority—would it not be fair to test the case as to whether this difference in adults is fundamental and prenatal, or whether it is the result of outside artificial influences, by an appeal to the brain of infants. If the brains of one hundred infants (each child weighing ten pounds) were examined, would the brains of the fifty males be distinguishable from those of the fifty females? In other words, when the weight of the body, the age, and other conditions are the same as to health, parentage, etc., and before the artificial means of development, educational stimulus and oppor- tunity are applied to the one and withheld from the other, could the sex be determined by the difference in brain, weight, shape, size, quality, or con- volutions? That would be the test, although it would not allow for the ages of hereditary dwarfage of the one, and healthy exercise of the brains of the other sex; but, as an opening, I was willing to stand on that test. It was in pursuance of this idea that I caused the following questions to be submitted to a large number of the leading brain students of America, went myself somewhat into the study of anthropology, and collected from several countries certain bits of information as to just how much basis there is for all this cry about the difference in men's and women's brains. Being a matter of heads, I wanted to know how much was “cry” and how much was “wool.” These are the questions submitted to the doctors, brain anatomists, and Political Conditions. 377 microscopists at the outset of my task: (1.) Is it known to the medical pro- fession whether in infants (of the same age, size, health, and inheritance at birth) the quantity, quality, and specific gravity of the gray matter differs in the sexes? Does the relative amount of gray matter differ? (2.) Do the convolutions? Form 2 Actual amount of gray matter differ? (3.) Given the brain, only, of a number of infants of the same age, weight, etc., could the sex be determined by the difference in shape, quantity, quality, and con- volutions? (4.) If so, are the differences more or less marked in infants than in adults P Is the frontal region of the brain larger and more developed in male than in female infants? Is the difference as marked as in adults? (5.) Does use, training, etc., develop gray matter, change texture, size, shape, etc., of the brain mass, or are these determined and fixed at birth 2 The same as to convolutions P (6.) Does use have to do with the location of the fissure of Rolando, or is that fixed at birth P. In an uneducated man would there be as much of the brain in front of this fissure as in a man of trained and developed mind? (7.) Does use or development of the mental powers change the specific gravity of the brain mass P Would it be the same in a great scholar as in a common laborer of the same general size and health 2 (8.) Is there unanimity of opinion on these questions? Are the facts known or only conjectured P (9.) If ten boys of the same weight, health, and gen- eral inheritance were taken in infancy and five of them subjected for fifty years to the conditions of a street or farm laborer, while the other five re- ceived all the advantages of the life of a scholar, would the ten brains present the same relative likenesses at death as at birth? Would opportunity and mental exercise make a change in the brains of the five students that would be discoverable by microscope and scales? In reply to the last question, the universal opinion was that it would be fair to assume that such difference would be perceptible. But one of the replies was that these points must necessarily remain only conjectural, since we can not do as the Scotch villager who shows to a wondering public the re- mains of a famous criminal, with this bit of history: “This is the skull and brain of a man who was hanged, at the age of forty, for murdering his entire family. This is the skull and brain of the same man at the age of seven. You can readily trace in the boy the man that was to be.” Since it might be looked upon with disfavor if we were to attempt to brain people from time to time in an effort to discover the effects of culture upon the fissure of Rolando, we must base all such arguments upon reason and analogy. Is it not a fair presumption, since reason and analogy lead to this universally ac- cepted theory as between man and man, that the same causes would produce the same results when applied between man and woman P Strangely enough, this is not held to be the case by these acute reasoners against sex equality in brain. But to illustrate once more the necessity of questioning facts first and 25 378 International Council of Women. the reasons for them afterward, I am assured by the most profound and capable students of these branches of science, that if such differences exist in the brain of infants as are indicated by my questions, it is not known to those who make a specialty of brain study; but, upon the contrary, the differences between individuals of the same sex—in adults, at least—are known to be much more marked than any that are known to exist between the sexes. Take the brains of the two poets, Byron and Dante. Byron's weighed 1,807 grms., while Dante's weighed only 1,320 grims., a difference of 487 grms. ; or take two statesmen, Cromwell and Gambetta. Crom- well's brain weighed 2,210 grims., which, by the way, is the greatest healthy brain on record—although Cuvier's is usually quoted as the largest, a part of the weight of his was due to disease, and if a diseased or abnormal brain is to be taken as the standard, then the greatest on record is that of a negro, criminal idiot—while Gambetta's was only 1,241 grms., a difference of 969 grims. Surely it would not be held because of this, that Gambetta and Dante should have been denied the educational and other advantages which were the natural right of Byron and Cromwell. Yet it is upon this very ground, by this very system of reasoning, that it is proposed to deny women equal advantages and opportunities, although the difference in brain weight between man and woman is said to be only Ioo grims., and even this does not allow for difference in body weight, and is based upon a system of averages, which is neither complete nor accurate. There is, then, not only no proof that the sex of infants could be distinguished by their brains, but all of the evidence which does exist on this subject is wholly against the assumption. Up to this point in my investigation I learned only what I had fully expected to learn. At the next step, and in connection with it, I met with information which seems to me to offer an opportunity for reflection upon the matter of mental—not to say verbal—accuracy in the Sex which does not wear “ bangs.” In the papers referred to, Dr. Hammond asserted, and no male voice or pen has seen fit to publicly correct him, that “it is only necessary to compare an average male with an average female brain to per- ceive at once how numerous and striking are the differences existing between them.” He then submits a formidable list of striking differences which include these : “The male brain is larger, its vertical and transverse diam- eters are greater proportionally, the shape is quite different, the convolu- tions are more intricate, the Sulci deeper, the secondary fissures more numerous, and the gray matter of the corresponding parts of the brain decidedly thicker.” - But as if all these were not enough to enable the merest novice to dis- tinguish the one from the other, even if he were near-sighted, he offers these reinforcements: “It is quite certain, as the observations of the writer show, that the specific gravity of both the white and gray matter of the brain Political Conditions. 379 is greater in man than in woman.” This would seem to leave woman without a reef to hang to ; for if by any chance her brain did not fall short in gray matter, the specific gravity of the rest of it would enable the doctor to ticket her as accurately as though she were to appear with ear-rings and train in a ball-room. Of this point this is what the leading brain anatomist in America wrote me: “The only article recognized by the profession as important and of recent date which takes this theory as a working basis is by Morselli, and he is compelled to make the sinister admission, while asserting that the specific gravity is less in the female, that with old age and with insanity the specific gravity increases.” If this is the case, I don’t know that women need sigh over their short-coming in the item of specific gravity. There appear to be two very simple methods open to them by which they may emulate their brothers in the matter of specific gravity if they so desire. One of these is certain, iſ they live long enough, and the other—well, there is no protective tariff on insanity. But to finally clinch his argument, Dr. Hammond continues: “ The question is, therefore, not so much that of quantity” (which appears to collide with his state ment that it was the “absolute brain weight '’ which was the sublime test, and drops my whale into the water again), “as it is of quality. The brain of woman is different from that of man in structure.” Again I applied my test. Does all this difference of structure and quality appear in the infant or only in the adult brains P Since it is held that these very differences are the ones produced by education and properly- diversified mental stimulus—as between man and man—is it not fair to as- Sume that like causes produce like results as between man and woman P Since woman has never had the advantages of these brain-developing proc- esses, is it not fair to assume, if all these differences do exist, that it is less a matter of natural and characteristic inferiority than of environment and opportunity, unless it exists in the same ratio in infants? That would be the test as to whether these are natural, necessary, pre-natal sex characteris- tics, or whether they are developed by external circumstances and environ- ment. The physical sex characteristics, which are natural, are as readily distinguished at birth as at maturity. - But after a woman's waist and brain are put into tight laces and shaped to fit the fashion, it is a rather poor time to judge of her natural figure, either physical or mental. There was but one reply to my questions. It was this: No such test has ever been made with the brains of infants, and the wildest imagination could only stand appalled at the effort. It would be impossible to distinguish the male from the female child by these “radical, natural, easily-discovered sex differences” in brain. I held, then, that the inference was perfectly legitimate that the great and numerous differences in the brains of adults, in so far as that was not, also, a mere flight of fancy, was not nat- ural, pre-natal, and necessary, but that it was certainly fair to assume it to 380 International Council of Women. be producible, by outside measures or environment, and that it could be no more natural nor desirable, for the digestive organs and the brain of one sex to be decreased and deformed by pressure, than it is for those of the other. But I confess I was wholly unprepared for the final result of my last ques- tion and argument. I discovered that these differences are not only not known to exist in infants, but that in spite of all the talk, the pathetic warn- ings, and the absolute statements to the contrary, that in a like number of adult brains such differences are not only not to be “perceived at once,” but that if Dr. Hammond or anybody else will agree to allow me to furnish him with twenty well-preserved adult brains to be marked in cipher, so that he will not have his information before he makes his test, he will find that his “numerous, striking, and easily perceived ” differences will not appear with any relation to sex, so far as is known at the present time. I made this offer to him through the Popular Science Monthly some six months ago. Up to date the twenty brains I offered him to try on have not been called for. Upon the contrary there will be found greater difference between individuals of the same sex than any known to exist between the sexes in any and all of these test characteristics; that, in the main, since women weigh less than men, it would be pretty safe to guess that most of the lighter brains belonged to the women, but that this test would prove wrong in many cases, and that the others would fail utterly. I asked them why they did not correct the general impression which men of their profession had given out in this matter. They said they did not see the use of it; what difference did it make, anyhow P And then it was a good enough “working theory.” I said, “But suppose it worked the other way, do you think that you would say that it made no difference, and that a working theory that worked all one way was a safe or an honest one to put forth as an established fact?” “Well, we are willing to tell you the truth about it,” said they ; “the fact is, it is all theory as yet ; there has not been a sufficient number of tests made to warrant the least dogmatism in the matter; what more can you ask of us than that P” What, indeed P I made another discovery; it was this: The brain of no remarkable woman has ever been examined Woman is ticketed to fit the hospital subjects and tramps, the unfortunates whose brains fall into the hands of the profession, as it were, by mere accident; while man is represented by the brains of the Cromwells, Cuviers, Byrons, and Spurzheims. By this method the average of men's brains is carried to its highest level in the matter of weight and texture; while that of women is kept at its lowest, and even then there is only claimed Ioo grammes difference It is with such statistics as this, it is with such dissimilar material, that they and we are judged. Finally, I discovered that there is absolutely no definite information on the subject now in the hands or books of the medical profession which can justify the least show of dogmatism in the matter; or if it were on the other Political Conditions. 381 side, would not be explained entirely away in five minutes, and there would not be the least question as to the desirability of the explanation, either. They told me not only that they did not know, but that no one could possibly know upon the statistics and with the instruments in the hands of the profession to-day. This being the case, perhaps it will be just as well for women to take a hand in the future investigations and statements themselves, and I sincerely hope that the brains of some of our able women may be preserved and exam- ined by honest brain students, so that we may hereafter have our Cuviers and Websters and Cromwells. And I think I know where some of them can be found without a search-warrant—when Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton, and some others I have the honor to know, are done with theirs. Until that is done, no honest or fair comparison is possible. At present there is too great a desire on the part of these large-brained gentlemen, like Dr. Ham- mond, to look upon themselves and their brains as “infant industries,” entitled to and in need of a very high protective tariff, to prevent anything like a fair and equal competition with the feminine product. But the fact is that we have heard so much on the one side about woman’s physical and mental short-comings, and on the other side, from our prohibition friends and others, so much of the moral delinquencies of men, that it seems to me that we are in danger of believing both. And I, for one, am begin- ning to feel a good deal like Mark Twain's Irishman, whenever I hear either one discussed. He had been having a controversy with another man, and, as a final “clincher” to his side of the argument, said, with emphasis: “Now, I don’t want to hear anything more from you on that subject but silence-–and mighty little of that.” - Allow me to read the closing paragraph of a letter to me from Dr. E. C. Spitzka, the celebrated New York brain specialist, to whom I am greatly in- debted for much valuable information : You may hold me responsible for the following declaration : That any statement to the effect that an observer can tell by looking at a brain, or examining it micro- scopically, whether it belonged to a female or a male subject, is not founded on care- fully-observed facts. The balance and the compasses show slight differences; the weight of the male brain being greater, and the angle formed by the sulcus of Rolando, forming a larger expansion of the frontal lobes; but both these points of difference have been determined by the method of averages. They do not necessa- rily apply to the individual brain and hence can not be utilized to determine the sex of a single brain, except by those who are willing to take the chances of guessing: The assertion that the microscope reveals definite characteristic points of difference between the male and female brain is utterly incorrect. No such difference has ever ſpeen demonstrated, nor do I think it will be by more elaborate methods than those we now possess. Numerous female brains exceed numerous male brains in absolute weight, in complexity of convolutions, and in what brain anatomists would call the nobler proportions. So that he who takes these as his criteria of the male brain may be grievously mistaken in attempting to assert the sex of a brain dogmatically. - 382 International Council of Women. If I had one hundred female brains and one hundred male brains together, I should select the one hundred containing the largest and best developed brains as probably containing fewer female brains than the remaining one hundred. More than this no cautious, experienced brain anatomist would venture to declare. Miss ANTHONY. I have the pleasure of introducing to you Mrs. Ashton Dilke, delegate from the Women's Liberal Association of Newcastle-on- Tyne. Mrs. DILKE.. I have always been impressed by the political importance of women’s voting. . It has seemed to me that whatever great advances were made by women in education, in philanthropy, in Science, or in any other branch of learning, they yet risked everything being swept away if their rights and their privileges and all that they had won were not backed up by a political vote. We have had, both in England and in the United States of America, many years of peace, and it is hard to grasp the idea that in times of war and revolution, political liberties that are not defended by a vote, may be swept away as if they had never existed ; whereas where con- stitutional government, either in the form of a constitutional monarchy or in the higher form of a republic, is established, once the war is passed, the voter steps to the ballot-box again, and liberty and law resume the sway they held before. There are two radical differences between political life in England and America. One of these differences is the fact that you have a written Con- stitution of your liberties—a Constitution I myself as an English woman, will admit one of the grandest the world has ever seen. That Constitution it would take brave men to attack, but it also would take a considerable amount of political agitation to make constitutional changes. In England, much as the Conservatives in the past were wont to talk of our grand consti- tution, no such thing exists at all; that is to say, the English constitution consists of those laws that are passed by Parliament from year to year. And therefore it has always seemed to me easier in England to obtain such a con- stitutional change as the question of women's suffrage involves. I am quite aware that there is a greater safety about your system of a written constitu- tion. But from the women's point of view, who wish a constitutional change, there are advantages in having an unwritten constitution, that may be changed from year to year. The whole tendency of public life in England during the past fifty years—in fact, it almost exactly coincides with the reign of our present sovereign—has been a series of measures intended to democ- ratize English institutions. We have been gradually increasing the number of persons holding votes; but at the present moment men even, have not universal suffrage in England. There is still a qualification for the vote there, and there are still large numbers of men unenfranchised, and I have found some of the greatest sympathy for the disfranchised women, among those men who remain disfranchised. Political Conditions. 383 Believing in the democratization of English institutions, and wishing to see in the end universal adult suffrage for men and women alike, I am ex- tremely anxious that we may obtain the enfranchisement of some women while there are some men disfranchised. While only a part of the men are enfranchised, it is possible for us to ask for only part of the women to be en- franchised; and if you knew how tied down by precedent the English gov- ernment is, if you knew how fond the English nation is of going step by step, and trying each step and wondering if they shall not go back upon it, you would realize that it is possible in England to obtain the temporary enfranchisement of a small number of women, with the hope in the future of enfranchising the whole. In the great extension of local government that is going on in the British Isles, Parliament is overburdened with work. Instead of having two chambers to divide the work between, they have one chamber of hereditary legislators, who sit for a couple of hours in the afternoon and then adjourn for dinner, and do no work at all, while the other chamber is overburdened. It is absolutely necessary in England at the present time, to find some means of relieving the House of Commons of its work, and that is being done by a large extension of local government. Women have already got their foot into this local government. It is sometimes said it is so dangerous to take the first step. In England women have taken the first step; although no women vote for Parliament, yet a very large number do vote in local affairs, that is, the “spinsters and widows.” The three principal votes are— 1st. The municipal vote; that is to say, all towns in England and Scot- land, with the exception of London, which have municipal institutions, allow the unmarried and widows to vote. This does not apply to Ireland. 2d. With regard to the schools, the same classes vote for what we in England call school boards; that is, a sort of parliament governing school affairs in these towns. In these school boards the women not only vote for the mem- bers sitting, but they hold positions themselves, and a large number of women have been returned as members of the school boards. The very first woman returned was in London, Mrs. Garrett Anderson, well known as a doctor. She is a sister of Mrs. Millicent Garrett Fawcett. The possibility of return- ing women to the school boards is very much assisted by the fact that they are elected by a cumulative vote; that is to say, if five members are to be elected for the board, each elector has five votes, and may give all to one candidate. That has enabled a small number of women voters to return the women candidates. And it certainly is a very interesting fact to find that the women do, as a rule, vote for the return of women to the school boards. 3d. There is another large question on which women in England have votes. There is an immense amount of poverty in England, and we have a Poor Law for dealing with that poverty. The Poor Law Guardians can be 384 International Council of Women. either men or women, and those who elect them are both men and women. In all these cases it is only widows and spinsters who may vote for the return of women to these boards. It is not only very important to find large bodies of women voting all over the country, but to know that women are very anxious to take every opportunity of exercising such vote, whenever they can do so; for we find that the proportion of women voting is fully equal to the proportion of men voting. The principle of women voting in local affairs, is now so estab- lished that no government, whether conservative or liberal, can bring in a bill for the extension of local affairs without including the enfranchisement of women. That was very well seen in the last government of Mr. Glad- stone, when Sir William Harcourt brought in a bill for the reform of the gov- ernment of London, the only unreformed municipality remaining in England. That bill, which, I am sorry to say, did not pass, would have enfranchised the women of London, although Sir William Harcourt himself is notoriously opposed to woman Suffrage. And so, again, I had no sooner set foot in America, than I took up a newspaper that gave an account of a local govern- ment bill brought in by the present government. The present government of Lord Salisbury is very conservative, and, by some persons, thought to be very reactionary; and yet, on account of the support, of a body of men in the House of Lords, known as the Liberal Unionists, the Conservatives them- selves have been obliged to extend local government to the counties of En- gland, to establish in the counties something like the municipal government in the towns; and throughout the counties of England it enfranchised the same body of “spinsters and widows.” And, of course, with the majority that Lord Salisbury commands in both Houses, there is no doubt that, before the present sitting of the House of Commons is finished—that is to say, about August next—a very large body of women will be enfranchised in this way alone. - We have already been told from this platform, by a lady from Canada, that in a province of Canada not only is there local franchise for women, but that unmarried women vote also for the local Parliament. There is one other little piece of the British Dominions that has already obtained women's Suffrage; peculiarly enough, that very small and almost forgotten piece of the British Islands is called the Isle of Man. - A Women's Suffrage bill has been brought many times into the House of Parliament; it has had some very distinguished leaders—some of the ad- vanced Liberal party—such men as John Stuart Mill, Jacob Bright, Leonard Courtney, and Mr. Woodhall, have devoted many years of their lives to forwarding the enfranchisement of women. - It is found that as the unmarried women have been enfranchised for local affairs, it is very much easier to obtain a bill enfranchising unmarried women for parliamentary affairs as well; and, therefore, the bill which is at present Political Conditions. 385 before the House of Commons, and which, I am glad to say, obtained a con- siderable majority in the last Parliament, but which never yet has been passed in all its stages in either the House of Commons or House of Lords, is for the enfranchisement of “spinsters and widows.” That, you see, is follow- ing pretty closely upon the other precedents. There is a divided opinion as to whether only unmarried women ought to be enfranchised, but this has been the result of a compromise; it was found that that could be obtained, and it was very difficult to say whether any other bill would be as well re- ceived in the House of Commons; and when it was found that a large sec- tion of the Conservative party, as well as of the Liberal party, were willing to support the bill for the enfranchisement of unmarried women, it was then arranged that the bill should have on its back the names of an equal number of Conservative and Liberal members, and that is the bill that is at present waiting for consideration before the House of Commons. - A great work has been done in the past by Women’s Suffrage Societies all over England. They have had to pass an immense amount of ridicule and abuse; but at the present day there is more tolerance of woman suffrage. Some years ago, when I first took an interest in the matter, it certainly was not so. Opinion seemed to be very sharply divided as to whether woman should have the parliamentary suffrage or not ; but at the present day there is a great deal of toleration, and I put down the toleration that it has obtained of late, very much to the action outside of the Woman Suffrage Society itself. For in England women take a very large part in politics. Women work at the elections very much in the way that men do. Women canvass and make speeches, not only for their husbands, and brothers, and fathers, but for any candidate in whom they are interested. And women have banded themselves together for both sides in politics, to work directly for liberalism or for conservatism. On the Conservative side those women are called the “Primrose League,” and on the Liberal side they are called the “Women's Liberal Association; ” and Mrs. Gladstone herself is president of one of those Women's Liberal Associations which I have the honor to represent here to-night. The Primrose League—that is to say, the Conservative ladies—have a most tremendous list of titles among their numbers, duchesses and countesses, and they have done woman suffrage the advantage of simply abolishing one old stock argument against us, an argument you must have heard in this country, as we have had it constantly in ours, the argument that politics did not con- cern women. They used to tell us, and we were especially told this by Con- servative men, that the polls was no place for women; but now that the Conservative party have gone down on their knees to every lady, begging her to come and help them, they have been obliged, for very shame, to give up using such arguments as this, and women are openly interested in poli- tics. 386 International Council of Women. A great deal was said by the speaker that preceded me, of the right to vote being included in the American Constitution. When first women's suffrage came before the English public, great efforts were also made to show, that as far back as the reign of Queen Elizabeth women had voted for Parliament, and that it was only during the wars, in the time of Cromwell, that the right to vote had fallen into disuse, and that it was, in fact, only in the beginning of the present century that they had been disfranchised, in so many words. If women's suffrage could have been obtained in that way, it would have saved us a great deal of trouble, but for my part I am quite content that the legislature in our country should pass women's suffrage deliberately; whether women voted in the past or not, it is quite certain that the men of the country never at any time intended in England that a large number of women should vote. Their voting was accidental, and I myself am quite content to remain without the franchise until it shall be given to the whole country. I should like to have the women's suffrage bill passed deliberately, So that we shall be entirely enfranchised—women of all classes. This would recognize their right more publicly than if we had been able to creep in by any back door into our constitution. I think the women's suffrage question was put forward very much among the wealthy women of England by the last reform bill, which was brought in by Mr. Gladstone with the object of enfranchising the agricultural people, and all the working men who lived outside the parliamentary boroughs. When that bill was before the House of Commons it was considered by the Women’s Suffrage Society and by the Members of Parliament who sup- ported their views, that it would be very wrong to let the bill pass without entering a protest in behalf of women's suffrage. It was very much the same thing that happened here in your country, at the time of the anti- slavery reform, when the women were compelled to allow the slaves to be- Come rulers and they await their time. We women were appealed to on every hand in England, to stand aside and let the bill pass for the en- franchisement of these agricultural people and laborers, and wait for our turn another time ; but the brave supporters of our cause in the House of Commons, moved an amendment to this great reform bill, and I am proud to say that in spite of every effort made by the government of the day, to prevent Liberals from voting, they went into Parliament and voted for women's Suffrage. The refusal on that occasion to enfranchise women, had a very great effect on the opinion of the well-to-do women of the country, for that bill contained a clause especially enfranchising domestic servants; it was called the “service franchise.” You see in England it is a complicated system for deciding who shall vote and who shall not vote. There is the labor franchise ; there is the lodge franchise, that enfranchises men living in lodgings ; and there are other franchises for different classes of people. And Mr. Gladstone himself, put a clause in this bill enfranchising Political Conditions. 387 servants, and it was called the service franchise. I do not think anything could have convinced rich women more than this, that their footmen, their butlers, waiters, and gardeners were all enfranchised by it, while they were left. Out. We in England have had to fight with many of the old arguments that you have been so affected by, and among them is one which I sometimes call the physical force argument—that women can not fight, and therefore should not vote. I should like you to remember a particularly curious fact in regard to that argument. Until a short time ago people said to me con- stantly, “You can not vote because you can not defend your country.” But there was another law that declared that when you were a policeman or a soldier, and therefore defended your country, you were especially excused from the ballot-box. So the logic was not on the side of those who declared that we could not vote because we could not defend our country; because we were not police or soldiers. That law has been altered to a certain extent now, because a certain number of soldiers and policemen are able to exer- cise the franchise to-day. But they do not vote because they are soldiers and policemen ; they vote because they come under the category of house- holders ; they vote as citizens and not as soldiers and policemen, and there- fore the argument holds good that the question of enfranchisement should not obtain upon one’s ability to defend one's country. There is another point I have heard from this platform—the question whether home life would be in any way affected by the political activity of women. And I, who have always been intensely interested in home life, who have had an intense belief in its sanctity, I would be the very last person to do anything in my power to weaken any such influence as that. I believe that the introduction of political interests into the home, will rather increase the intelligent interests in everything that women undertake : therefore I advocate this, for this reason as well as for every other TeaSOI). Since I have been in this country I have heard many persons express disapproval of your system of universal Suffrage. If I could assure Amer- icans that in our country we see the disadvantages on the other side ; that we have been working for fifty years for the enfranchisement of every man and woman of every class, because we have seen the disad- vantages of partial Suffrage—I should assure you that I believe that no such blow could be given to the principle of democratization, as to see our great sister across the Atlantic taking away even the very smallest tittle of enfranchisement, from any who have come to her shores. We are accustomed to turn to your country to see the advantages of popular enfranchisement. And I can not but repeat the words—that it would be the greatest blow to our labors in these days, to withdraw any small part of the enfran- chisement which your country grants, if you were for a moment to think 388 International Council of Women. of disfranchising the small company even of those who come to this country. It is a grand fact—the equality of America; it is a fact that we are realizing more and more every day as we come to your land and you come to ours. We hope before very long we shall be able to enfran- chise some, even if only a few, women, and give an example to the countries on both sides of the splendid political work that women are able to accom- plish, and I hope that the time will be very short in coming. The paper of Baroness Alexandra Gripenberg, who was too ill to attend the Council, is here presented. WOMAN'S WORK IN FINLAND. It is told about a rich man that the only picture in his grand ban- quet-room, was that of a child, poorly dressed, and with a piece of dry bread in its hand. He wished it to be a sermon without words for him- Self and his guests around his rich table. You, ladies and gentlemen, you, the children of grand America, old rich England, glorious France, Germany, Italy, India | you are sitting at the rich man’s table. I am going to show you the picture of a poor child—I am going to tell you a few words about Finland, that little, forgotten corner of the world, where the youngest and most unknown among old Europe's daughters live. Finland has had a hard lesson to learn, being for centuries the battle-ground for Russia and Sweden. Whatever civilization was sown during some years of peace, was again destroyed by long and bloody wars. The hard climate created famines, the famines created the plague, and those two took what the wars had left of manhood, youth, and health. What was the position of the forgotten nation during those long periods of endless wars? What was the position of the Finnish women? History is silent, as she generally is, concerning women; but no doubt they took their part in those dark days. The poets speak of woman's beautiful destiny, to heal with Soft hands the warrior's wounds, far from the noisy battle-ground. But we all know that in reality her position is worse than that. There is, however, one reason why we may hope that the Finnish woman's position was miti- gated by one circumstance. Deep in the Finnish national character there is a greater admiration for spiritual superiority, than for physical strength, and already in our old, national epic, Kalevala, he who conquered his enemy by his words, was a greater hero than he who won the victory by his sword. I think this is always a good sign for us women, the physically weaker part of humanity. The Finnish women's legal position was, of course, the same as prevailed in Sweden, to which country it belonged until 1809. In the thirteenth cen- tury they obtained the right of inheritance, which was confirmed by law in #734. Sons, however, inherited two-thirds and daughters only one-third of their father's property. A woman was always considered a minor, unless she Political Conditions. 389 became a widow, and a wife was in absolute dependence upon and subjec- tion to her husband. As to education, scarcely anything was done for women ; but the Protestant clergy, at a very early time, began to demand instruction in reading the Bible for every one, and, of course, even the women shared this blessing. It is also known that several schools, as early as 1684, received girls, who were occupied with reading, writing, and the catechism. - Exhausted with her heroic struggles against Russia, Finland went to sleep after the annexation in 1809. When she began to awake, many questions were pressing upon her. Six hundred years of Swedish rule had given to her upper classes the stamp of Swedish civilization. Although the bulk of the population (six-sevenths) were Finns, speaking an entirely different lan- guage, they were obliged to send their children to Swedish schools, if they wished to give them education. The law courts were all carried on in Swed- ish, even when the case to be tried, and the criminal to be judged, were Finnish. But the awakening sense of nationality began to remove these grave disabilities, which threatened to create artificial boundaries between the people and the educated classes. Many women joined this patriotic work, but many more devoted themselves to a deep, religious movement, which spread through Finland in 1840. It raised and united them by its profound, spiritual influence, but at the same time left them indifferent to their social or legal positions. Every attempt to raise themselves had been condemned as irreconcilable with Christian views. The women were silent, not daring, not wishing to look further than their home duties. Their thoughts were simple and quiet, like the lonely lakes in their fatherland, and they scarcely dreamed of any other responsibilities, than those concerning the husband’s dinner and the childrens' clothes. - But Fredrika Bremer came, and with her a fresh breeze, which moved the surface of those calm waters. The seed which that noble woman planted reached also Finland. Her “ Hertha '’ roused sharp discussions, which were the beginning of the present movement, and Miss Adelaide Ehrenrooth, the first Finnish authoress upon the woman question, made her appearance. In 1863, a bill was passed, which granted an unmarried woman’s majority at twenty-five, but on application to the local authorities, and if no reasonable objection is made to her request, it is possible for a young woman at twenty- one to obtain a special certificate of majority. In 1878 women obtained the right to equal inheritance with their brothers. The friends of women, however, concentrated their work upon the higher education of girls. In 1795 the first girl's high school had been established by the State, which afterward increased the number of these schools. The capital, Helsingfors, had one of seven classes, and the country towns, sev- eral of four classes. But as long as the education they gave was only ele- mentary, and none of them led to the University, we women thought we had a right to complain. In 1873 Some University teachers opened a 390 International Council of Women. woman's academy in Helsingfors, but the attempt failed, as the young women had not sufficient solid preparation, and had no right whatever to examina- tions or further study in the University. We continued to demand higher education. In a little country it is easier to make ourselves heard, and some- times, the last months before the gathering of the Parliament, our intelligent and enterprising women decided to have an article upon the higher education in every newspaper over the whole country, all in the same week. In 1882 the ladies of Kuopio, led by Miss Backlund, Mrs. Canth, and Mrs. Stenius, issued an appeal to their countrywomen to support a scheme for higher education of giris. This appeal was wickedly called an ‘‘ingenious stupidity,” and people laughed at us women, who gathered in large public meetings to discuss the question; but the State now appointed a committee for the organization of the girls' high schools. Two high schools with co- education, and both leading to the University, were established by private societies. Since that, every new year has won us some new victories. The State does not yet wholly maintain any co-educational high schools, but gives grants to several of them. Besides that, it at present maintains eight Swedish and six Finnish girls' high schools. The University is still closed to us, the clerical party being its faithful watchers; but bills for the legal ad- mission of women to the University, are introduced to every new Parlia- ment, and we hope soon to take this last fortress.” By special permission we, however, can enter the University, and twelve ladies have passed its degrees. Between 1870 and 188o our first lady doctor of philosophy, Miss Emma Astroem, and our first lady physician, Miss Rosina Heikel, took their degrees. Miss Astroem is lecturer in a college and Miss Heikel is appointed physician for women and children of the poor, in Helsingfors. Those young women, who do not go to the University, enter a college or “pedagogical class,” as we call them, when they have finished their high schools of seven classes. In the colleges they stay three years, and there they also can be prepared to be teachers in girls' high schools and some kinds of boys' Schools. In that case they, however, have to pass an examination in pedagogy before the professor in that science. Girls who wish to undertake practical work, enter needlework, industrial, commercial, and dairy schools. The daughters of the people obtain a good and thorough education during six or seven years in the public schools, which are partly free. The State has maintained these schools since 1865; there are at present 173 for girls and 465 mixed. It is significant that every year scores of young women from the best families, undertake the public- school teacher's hard work, for which they are preparing themselves in special training-colleges of four years' courses. It is the same if the mother *Since this article was prepared, three houses in our Parliament, namely, the Nobility, the Bourgeoisie, and the Peasants, have passed the bill for the legal admission of women to the University. The clergymen, by a small majority of their number, opposed it. Women are also permitted to become members of the Poor Law Committee. - Political Conditions. 391 is dressed in silks or wears poor clothes, if only she is a loving mother, and So we Finns love our poor, dear Finland with a burning patriotism, and our highest wish is to make the whole nation happy and free from the yoke of ignorance. As to female employment, we have comparatively great liberty. Women occupy situations in the post and telegraph offices, as clerks and cashiers in the civil service, banks, railways, newspaper offices. Many are shop-keep- ers, or occupied in printing and book-binding, and as heads of workshops. They can be teachers in all kinds of girls' and in several boys' schools. It is not unusual that a woman is a tutor in languages throughout all the classes in a boys' high school. It must be remembered, however, that they never receive the same salaries as men, even for identical work. I don’t know if it is true, but people have told me that in a school board in the country, the members allowed twenty dollars a year for the food of the male teacher's cow, but only fifteen dollars for the female teacher's cow. I think it was rather hard for the poor cow, who had to suffer for the sex of her owner. As to the Finnish women's rights as citizens, the have had they munic- ipal vote over the whole country, since 1879. They are also members on school boards for all girls' and mixed schools, and possess the right to pub- lish newspapers, and the country seems not to have been in any danger since we obtained these rights. Since 1863 bills and petitions affecting women have been introduced to every new legislative assembly. As to married women's property, we have not yet won more than just a step forward, “as much as is consistent with mainte- nance of the husband's authority.” In literature we have many good friends. I will only mention our much- beloved poet, Topelius, who, as long ago as 1840, wrote an eloquent appeal to the Finnish mothers to share in the great national work of teach- ing the neglected and despised Finnish language to their children. “With- out women,” he said, “no great idea can be left as an inheritance to future generations.” He, also, as the rector of the University, attempted to open it for women, but political changes in Russia checked his efforts. Among the women themselves Miss Ehrenrooth and Miss Ongelin were the earliest writers, subsequently followed by Mrs. Canth, Mrs. Loefgren, Mrs. Stenius, Miss Hagman, and other ladies. Mrs. Canth's powerfully- written drama, “A Workman's Wife,” filled the National Theater evening after evening, with a deeply-moved public, and at once made the question of married women’s property, the question of the day. We are few workers, but we are a brave set. There is a saying that if you tell Finnish ladies about some disabilities concerning women in your country, they will look at you with great surprise and ask, “But why do you allow it P’’ quite as if it was in your power to remove them. In 1884 Mrs. Elizabeth Loefgren and other ladies founded the “Finnish 392 International Council of Women. Women’s Union,” which I have the honor to represent at this Council. It was looked upon with great suspicion at first by the general public. “What do these ladies want?” asked the conservatives. “Why can not they be married off at once and have done with it?” But we did not mind; we only worked. At first we started an office for promoting the employment of women—one department for ladies, the other for servants. We then sent a petition to the town council of Helsingfors to appoint a lawyer for the poor, by which poor wives might obtain legal aid and advice without payment, in the troubles caused perhaps by a drunken or unfaithful husband. Once a year we publish a review called Æxcelsior, a volume of about 200 pages, printed in Swedish and Finnish, both of which languages are spoken in Finland. We also offer prizes for the best essays on questions concerning the enfranchise- ment of women, and arrange lectures and publish pamphlets. As our strength is limited in a little country, we can not divide our efforts, but deal with all subjects affecting women. Our permanent committee for the dress reform, arranges lectures and exhibitions of dress models. This question is of grave importance for our poor nation, living in a cold climate, where it ought to be the women's duty not to repeat the follies and luxuries of richer nations living in warmer climates. - Public opinion in Finland towards us, is changing wonderfully, and people frequently tell us that they are not our enemies, only slow friends. Many women, who from religious or other motives do not join the suffrage work, are active supporters of temperance or social purity work, these questions and also that of co-education, being at present subjects of great interest for the whole country. We expect to find many good workers for the cause of women in the generations growing up under their influences. True, con- servatism on one hand and materialism on the other, put difficulties in our way, but we never doubt that the victory will be ours. It is true we Finns are a little slow ; we like to know people thoroughly before we make friends. But when we once grasp your hand, we hold it fast through thick and thin. And in a poor nation, with a hard time behind her and an uncertain future before her, man and woman are more nearly equal. The woman becomes more the honest, faithful fellow-worker than the toy, and the grave questions of life find easier places to sow their seeds. And if we women only are earnest in our belief, earnest in our work, nothing can withstand us. If there is truth in an idea, nothing can withstand it. When you see the large snow-fields of Siberia, with their endless ice and Snow, and you see nature dark, silent, mourning, you think she is the captive of an eternal winter. But let the spirit of the Spring work his silent work, and nature will break her yoke irresistibly, gloriously, and you shall see those same desolate fields covered with the sweet blossoms of the Arctic spring. Political Conditions. 393 WOMAN’s RIGHTS IN DENMARK. By KIRSTINE FREDERIKSEN, of Copenhagen. It was the Social and political storms of the French revolution which aroused Mary Wolstonecraft and generally called forth an examination of woman's position in Society; and it was the movement of 1848 in Denmark, giving to men their political rights, which drew attention to the question of woman's rights. Under the pseudonym of Clara Raphael and in the form of a collection of letters, Miss Mathilde Fibiger, a girl of nineteen summers (1830-1872), gave a general outline of those demands for woman's personal independence which afterwards, by other persons and under other forms, have received more precise and more definite expression. She was evidently strongly moved by that national enthusiasm which, during the three years' war with Germany, pervaded the whole Danish nation, and for a time her book was borne along by that current. But when the enthusiasm subsided, and her ideas were viewed as purely practical issues, they met with an over- powering opposition. She was actually forced to lay down her pen and she sought rescue in a practical position ; she became the first female telegraphist— a position at that time, by no means agreeable. Miss Pauline Worm (1825-1883) had stronger nerves. Always ready for battle and everywhere at hand when needed, she fought bravely with pen and tongue for woman’s rights. Before her no woman in Denmark had dared to appear in public as an orator; she broke the spell. Nevertheless, though her poetical talent and the clearness of her intellect ought to have given her rank among our best men, she had to wear out her life as a school-teacher in the provinces. Another atmosphere was needed ; the barometer must fall before birds will fly. Those two women stood as outposts so far in the front of their time, that they could not expect to live and see the victory. Some progress, however, came with the political reorganization of 1848. In 1857 daughters acquired equal rights of inheritance with sons, and, like men, women became of age at the twenty-fifth birthday. In 1860 an impor- tant step was taken toward opening up the way for women to economical inde- pendence; they were admitted to graduation and appointment as teachers in the public schools. Miss Pauline Worm had often agitated this question in her own circle, but it was Bishop Monrad, at that time Minister of State, who, without any connection with said agitation, took up the matter, made it a practical issue, and carried it through. Gradually people began to be used to see ladies as clerks in the offices, private as well as public. With 1870, which year is generally designated as a literary new-birth in Denmark, a brighter day also began to dawn over woman. John Stuart Mill's book was translated by Dr. Brandes and extensively read. The poets—Jens Hostrup, Bjornson, Ibsen, etc.—took up the question of woman's rights, and treated it in their best books and from a very liberal point of view. In 1879 women were admitted to the University—that is, 26 394 International Council of Women. to participation in the highest education the State offers. Most, however, of what has been done in Denmark for the education of women, is due to one single lady, Miss Natalie Zahle, who, without any support from the State, has created an institute of female education which far exceeds any of the schools for boys which the State maintains with such great sacrifice of money. During the war with Germany, 1863–1864, women asked to be allowed to nurse the sick and wounded, but in vain; none but male help was tolerated in the hospitals. But in 1875 an organization of female nurses was founded, and in 1876 a Danish division of the Red Cross was established. In the same year women began to form associations with the purpose of fighting the public prostitution, protecting animals, and, first and foremost, improv- ing the general social position of women. Five young ladies, four singers and a cornetist, then gave the song, “The Yellow Ribbon,” words by Marie Le Baron. Miss ANTHONy. I now present Mrs. Zadel B. Gustafson. Mrs. GUSTAFSON. * * * In Europe, or to speak more definitely, in Sweden, Denmark, France, Germany, Holland, and Great Britain, my observations have led me to conclude, that, although in all these countries, and particularly in Great Britain, agitation is going on in the direction of conditional woman suffrage, yet, were it secured, it would not, for some considerable period, mean more than an accession of subservient force, to the power and purposes of the male political organizations of those coun- tries; while, from what I have observed in this, my own country in former years, and within the last fortnight of this significant year, I am led to be- lieve that woman Suffrage would mean, adding to its present political strength an alliance with kindred force, an alliance which would bring to it a pre- ponderance of the trained moral impulse, the loving courage, mental lucidity and intuitional, spiritual wealth which will ultimately everywhere, be the special contribution of woman's ballot to political and social progress. * * * American civilization is not merely a new civilization ; it is, so far, the new civilization of the world. Its life, scarcely distended or dis- turbed by its vast and various influx from the veins of nearly all other human races, is like that of all childhood, elastic, swift, full of heat and motion, and thereby differentiated from all previous civilization into one that brims with the possibilities which give birth to and establish ideals, which by essentially transcending must disregard the old—if their claim be only that of antiquity—to make way for the new. * * * If my conclu- sions are correct, obviously, the women of America have special, heavy responsibilities in this matter of proving woman's citizenship to be a ques- tion, not of sex immunity nor sex responsibility, but of race progress. To rightly consider and rightly act upon this responsibility, let us remem- ber at the start and bear steadily in mind during all the way to our goal, that Political Conditions. 395 woman suffrage is not a question of whether we shall use political power more or less wisely than men; of whether we are greater fools, more dupeable or more purchaseable than they ; it is not a question of whether the majority of women yet know enough to want it, or whether the best women will ignore the right and the worst women use it when it is gained ; it is not a question properly affected by any of the arguments or debates pro or con as to our fitness in body, brain, heart, or tendency—in balancing which, so much time and force have for so many years been expended. It is only and exactly what it has been from the first—a simple question of whether the ballot is useful to mankind as a proper instrument in the management of human affairs. If it is, then it is as useful for women as for men, and is their right and their responsibility on all grounds which make it such for men. Let us stand to this position until we have won its fruits. It is impregna- ble. By holding to it ourselves and keeping our opponents, both women and men, to this point, we save time, we save force, and we promote con- viction by concentrating, with the threefold power of our simplicity, single- ness, and resolution—opposition and advocacy alike upon the single, central truth. The first thing we want for the race is health, sanity of body and mind. We want these before all things else, that we may secure all other good by means of these. We have heard, during this memorable week, a various and forcible pre- sentation of the evils which sap the physical, mental, and spiritual life of the race, and threaten, if not overcome, to degrade humanity even beyond our marvelous powers of recuperation. And we have listened to many rational, practical, and sound suggestions as to the remedies for these evils. Rem- edy must, of course, begin at the root; and among all these evils the funda- mental one is the alcoholic habit, because we must have sober people before we can have people who will think rationally on any subject, or be able to form and carry out any rational purpose. * * * Now, this traffic exists and flourishes under laws made, executed, and defended by men, in whom the alcoholic habit, appetite, and heredity have wrought so stultifying an effect that it is useless to look to them for any initiative, adequate to the im- minent and awful necessities of the case. The drink evil will never be mastered until we have the vote of women to the rescue—a fact thoroughly appreciated by the liquor-dealers and acted upon by them, too. For the sake of this one cause alone, the overthrow of the drink traffic, to say nothing of our duty in every good cause which the vote can pro- mote—a woman's vote just as much and for precisely the same reasons as a man's—for this one cause alone it is our duty to so press for our right of suffrage that we shall get it ; to so rouse the consciences of all other women, and to so sting and quicken the self-respect of those men whose lives are unques- tionably influenced and largely guided by us—our fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons—that they will feel we neither do nor can respect or love them as 396 International Council of Women. we wish to do, and as they need and we need that we should, unless they will really and earnestly do all in their power to help us in removing the shame, theirs, in the first instance, but ours also, now that we know more than we did of our disfranchisement. We must work with infinite patience and determination, and with a persistence as courteous as unflinching, among the ignorant, timid, disaffected, prejudiced, selfish, and indifferent of our own sex, until every one of them is won over to the clear realization of this truth, that they, that their children, that the whole race—men almost more pro- foundly than women—need the full enfranchisement of women. It is our duty to push this matter of our franchise rights and responsibili- ties so logically, so forcibly, so unceasingly, by every proper available means and by the intelligent devising of new means, that the whole earnestness and dignity of womanhood shall be seen and felt with overwhelming, convincing power, gracious but strong, and not to be gainsaid. * * * It has been argued that the power of effective combination for a given end is not possessed by women ; that their personal feelings and emotions always have got and always will get the better of any effort in this direction. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union of the United States demolishes this argument. They have entered into association for securing certain ends, precisely as men have hitherto done, sinking personal preposessions, preju- dices, and antipathies. * * * Men have had long practice and have gradually acquired the lesson that the power of any combined effort—i. e., party power—lies in having a fixed principle, a determined purpose to effectuate it, a clear plan and plain code as to the modus offerand; ; and in being individually pledged to these, irrespective of all other merely personal con- siderations. In spite of the lack of those advantages and rights which men have claimed and used, and while still carrying the burden of all their polit- ical, social, religious, and personal disabilities, the Woman's Christian Tem- perance Union is as thoroughly disciplined, coherent, resolute, and practical- working an organization as exists in the world anywhere to-day. * * * Being disfranchised, our weapons against the drink evil and against our legal disabilities, have been hitherto moral suasion and prayer. Both methods are as old as the race itself. Moral suasion may in the long run—not always—meet the needs of the moral natures, but national and social history have shown that it is utterly inadequate to save the great masses of mankind in their various degrees of moral and immoral ten- dencies from any universal danger. As to prayer, Surely essential prayer proves itself such, by our doing as fully as we possibly can, our part toward realizing the object for which we pray. To me it seems often suffered to degenerate into a time-wasting formality; I think we pray too much ver- bally and publicly, and too little in our thoughts and work. The last kind of praying is, I am convinced, the highest spiritual energizer of human life, the true source of an inexhaustible capacity to achieve and progress. So we Political Conditions. 397 must realize our prayers in our votes. No thoughtful woman imagines that the right of suffrage is other than a tremendous responsibility, involving as a duty a wide range of laborious and practical studies of life in its individual, social, religious, political, and international departments, and that the use of the ballot means anything less than a deliberate share in the labors and blessings of the progressive, or in the guilty inertia of the retrogressive movement of the world. In the past, men, for the most part in ignorant co-operation with little-understood processes of evolution, have kept their hands on the leverage of human affairs. It has served to check and pervert their own moral development and to intensify in them, the despotic, in us, the servile tendencies, common in the germ—as are all human powers, vir- tues, and vices—to the original individuality of both sexes. We must shame out the tyrants in men, and the cowards in ourselves, and insist upon our equal partnership with men in all the responsibilities and hopes of life. We want to get rid of the social evil. We want to have it recognized that male morality is everywhere as essential to human progress as is the morality of women ; that in fact the one can not exist in any complete sense without the other. * * * We want better and cleaner lives in our homes ; we want an honest system of industries and trades, that we may have a distribution of the whole increment, in juster proportion to the labor, Sacrifices, and risks involved ; we want sanitary reforms, reforms of laws, civil, international, and local ; we want the prison system changed from crim- inal-making into regenerating agencies; we want the so-called philanthropies and charities, which too often are so clumsily managed that they eat up with , their own red-tape ramifications the sums meant to relieve the necessitous, to set talent free and touch worthy struggle with opportunities ; we want these transmuted, so that opportunity and desert come together to the full- est advantage. We want every good thing about which we theorize, and for which we strive in groups, and leagues, and under many names. How shall we get them? By getting the ballot and sweeping out the drink—the most powerful foe to the spirit of civilization ; the worst enemy of religion and morals; the greatest universal destroyer of physical health, of Sanity of mind, of spiritual life. * * * Let us, as women, cultivate the habit of thinking, not of what we have been taught to consider our province or sphere, and of what within such limits we can or can not do—there is nothing which we can not do, if we resolve to do it. Let us try to realize that our sphere is determined by no iſse dixit but that of our own powers. Men, those who have real acumen, know this very well. But that will do us no good until we know it perfectly well ourselves, and act upon the knowledge. There is not a horse of sound lung and limb in all the world, which could not keep from its back or unseat any man undertaking to subdue it, if it knew its own power ; it does not know it, and so we can master it. We are told that “knowledge is power.” 398 International Council of Women. Let us put this sentence yet more explicitly, and say rather that knowledge of power is power. Miss ANTHONY. I now keep the promise of last evening, and present to you Mrs. Clara Neymann, of New York, who will give the closing word of this session. SENTIMENTALISM IN POLITICS. Mrs. NEYMANN. I am glad—nay, I am happy to see this day—to be with you on this memorable occasion. It is a proud day for the women of Amer- ica. Those represented here show that woman can excel in devotion to principles, devotion to in tellectual pursuits, devotion to the practical work. Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Stone have verified by their own lives and actions the theories they have taught to us; to know them, to be with them, is not to have lived in vain. If I am not jubilant in the words I shall speak to-night it is because I remember the poet's words, “Success makes a harder struggle necessary.” Our Republic was ushered in by the philosophy of reason. Reason and justice applied to human affairs, mark the incoming spirit of the nineteenth century. But this high priest of the mind has of late disappeared from our political life, and we have in its stead sentimentality and unreason. Our cause, woman’s enfranchisement, though far advanced among the thinking public, would be triumphant if it was not for this new foe which judges and assigns things not according to their intrinsic value, but to personal likes and dislikes. Petty arguments, selfish ambitions, mercenary motives have taken the place of genuine patriotism, and our just demand to help man in the arduous business of government is opposed upon sentimental grounds. Sentimentality is partial, while reason and justice are universal, and apply to all and each alike. They tell us that politics is unclean ; while it is, next to religion, the most sacred occupation of the civilized man or woman. The pursuit of politics, rightly conceived and honorably pursued, calls into activity the highest motives and the most exacting virtues of the human soul—self-sacrifice and self-devotion. And these virtues woman has all through the ages practiced in her home-sphere, preparing herself for her higher mission—a political reformer. Since her home-sphere no longer re- mains her exclusive occupation, she must now offer these gifts and virtues she has developed, and which every true man admires, upon the altar of her country and devote herself to her country's welfare and her country's honor. Since questions of peace, of arbitration, of reconciliation have superseded those of war and conquest, it is folly, sheer sentimentality to still hold up the mediaeval ideal of womanhood. Men who hold up this effete ideal are responsible for woman's frailty and frivolity; they strengthen by their preference of weak and sentimental girls and women, all the folly and petti- ness we suffragists would like to eradicate. The coming woman must be strong and sweet. She must come from her well-ordered home and bring Political Conditions. 399 grace and dignity and purity into our public and political life. Life means activity. Let us make our actions great and noble and far-reaching. Give woman freedom for a wider and broader exercise of her best gifts and virtues, as the basis of all moral action is freedom, opportunity for the full exercise of faculties. We have no desire to compete with man, to be his equal in character or attainment; we simply ask for free scope and an open field, leaving the result to the discretion of every individual woman. The triumph of republican institutions, a genuine democracy, depends upon the freedom of all, and not upon the monopoly of one class or one sex. Thou, America, for this scheme's culmination, for this thou hast been created. - Adjourned. Mrs. Helen M. Gougar, who was to have given the first address of this session—her subject, “Party, Press and Peo- ple,”—was called home by a death in her family, and the com- mittee was compelled to withdraw her name from the final edition of the programme. SUNDAY, APRIL 1, 1888. AFTERNOON SESSION. R E L I G I O U S S Y M P O S I U M . Miss ANTHONY. The meeting will be opened by Mrs. J. P. Newman, of the Metropolitan Church, of this city. - Mrs. NEWMAN. The Psalms of David are beautiful prayers, and so we will repeat the Nineteenth Psalm, beginning, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” (After reading the Psalm, Mrs. Newman continued.) On this beautiful, bright Easter Sabbath so many thoughts are coming into our hearts, and I have been thinking more than anything else how much I wish my name was Mary, because Mary was the mother of our Lord ; and when she was told that she was to be the mother of the Lord, she said: “Be it unto Thine handmaiden according to Thy word.” And when Jesus was asked in other days who was his mother, he said: “Whosoever doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my mother, and sister, and brother.” And to-day we are brought into that beautiful relationship with Christ. And, then, He said afterwards, “You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you and ordained you that you should go forth and bring forth much fruit, and whatsoever you shall ask the Father in my name I will do it.” And there is nothing more appropriate than the great prayer He taught his disciples when He was on the earth. And, now, while we repeat that prayer unitedly, may we each of us feel that it enters into our lives and into all our future. (After the prayer, all joined in singing the hymn, “Greeting,” by Longfellow.) Miss ANTHONY. I now have the pleasure of introducing to you Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage, of New York. WOMAN IN THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Mrs. GAGE. To me, one of the most notable things connected with this Council has been the almost universal unanimity with which the delegates, both ministerial and lay, in invocation and speech, have ignored the femi- nine in the Divinity. So notable has this non-recognition been, that the morning when I presided over its proceedings I was in some little trouble to find the woman far enough advanced in theology to recognize the divine motherhood, but eventually, in Isabella Beecher Hooker, I secured such person for the invocation with which the programme of the Council demands all proceedings should be opened. The almost total ignoring of the Divine Motherhood of God by those who have in any way . Religious Symposium. 401 referred to the Supreme Power, has been to me a subject of profound surprise and astonishment. - All thoughtful persons, and foremost among them should be the women here represented, must be aware of the historical fact that the prevailing religious idea in regard to woman has been the base of all their restric- tions and degradation. It underlies political, legal, educational, industrial, and social disabilities of whatever character and nature. The word “God,” which simply means good, has everywhere been interpreted by the Christian Church, especially for the last hundreds of years, as well as by the later Jewish theocracy, as of but one gender—the masculine; and it has been the occasion for the priesthood of both dispensations to ignore the feminine principle everywhere. Inasmuch as history teaches us that the rack, the torture, the destruction of human will, the degradation of woman for the past eighteen hundred years, have been depend- ent upon masculine interpretation of the Bible, based upon belief in a purely masculine divinity, this Council has been to me a dangerous evidence of woman's ignorance upon this most important of questions. It was the teaching of Aristotle which the church endorsed under penalty of punishment for heresy that the supreme effort of nature was always for the masculine, she only producing the ſeminine when balked of her first intention. And even when the great naturalist, Linneaus, of whom it has been said he made the frozen plains of Lapland to blossom like fairy fields, first made known his wonderful sexual system of plants, the basis of all modern investigation in botany, he was shunned as one who had degraded nature and insulted the Most High. It is especially surprising that the advocates of social purity fail to recognize the femininity of the divine—of God; that they alike fail to see, to speak of, and to address the Divine Mother, when the fact of this ignoring by the church and by man has resulted in the creation of two codes of morals, everywhere recognized in society, the lax for man, the strict for woman. Had it not been for this theory which has grown out of the doctrines of the church in regard to the masculinity of God and the supreme wickedness of woman, the world would not now be filled with the grossness and moral wrongs which, because of her higher nature, are everywhere made to fall with Supreme force upon woman. In all ancient nations we find goddesses seated everywhere with gods, in many instances regarded as Superior to them, and of greater influence in the affairs of the universe. Nor had this idea quite died out at the advent of Christianity. To the majority of the Christian world the early history of the church is entirely unknown, but the student can glean enough to show that the equal feminine nature of the divine was accepted <> by the church. - 402 International Council of Women. The fact that upon his baptism by John, the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus in the form of a dove, is sufficient to prove this were other testimony wanting, the dove among all ancient nations symbolizing the feminine principle. It is also remarkable that the Hebrew possesses no masculine gender for dove. Not until after his baptism, when the spirit, or feminine principle of the divinity, rested upon and united itself with Him, did Jesus take up his ministry. As spirit in the Hebrew answers to all genders, and in Greek to the feminine alone, it is easy to see the false beliefs engendered by church teachings as to the masculinity and father- hood alone of God. Our records of the first three Christian centuries prove that even the early and oft-quoted fathers of the church regarded the third person of the Trinity as feminine. One of the most revered ancient scriptures of that period, “The Gospel according to the Hebrews,” in use during the second century, and of great authority, taught this, Origen, in the third century (A. D. 230), quoting from it. This Gospel was believed to have been compiled from still older manuscripts; one entitled “The Oracles and Sayings of Christ,” a second “The Gospel Preaching and Doctrines of Peter.” The great biblical scholar, Tischendorf, to whom the world is indebted for the dis- covery of the famous “Sinaitic Codex,” and almost equally for the renowned Vatican Codex, hidden so many years in the Vatican palace at Rome, endorses the authenticity of this Gospel, believing it to have been in use by Justin, one of the earliest Christian fathers, whose birth is placed at A. D. 89. Another canonical book of the New Testament, now lost, was known as “The Everlasting Gospel,” and was also called “The Gospel of the Holy Ghost.” In this Jesus is represented as saying: “My mother, the Holy Ghost, took me.” The Gnostics, that early philosophical division of the church which claimed possession of the only true Christianity, denominated this feminine principle, Sophia, i. e., wisdom. With the Kabalists, the feminine signified those who possessed a knowledge of secret things, especially of a divine character. The “ Divine Spirit” was conceded to be the feminine Jehovah, or the feminine principle of the Godhead. This spirit is not alone the comforter; it is the animating power—the life. A recent article upon the Esoteric or interior meaning of the gospels refers to spirit in this wise: “One is she, the spirit of the Elohim of life.” The primary sense of spirit, as given by Webster, is to drive, to rush. This recalls the Day of Pentecost, when the Spirit descended as a mighty, rushing wind, visible as tongues of fire. Fire possesses the same radical sense as spirit, signifying to rush. Either as spirit or as fire, this prin- ciple of the divinity denotes activity, animation, vigor, force, and is equivalent to life itself—the creative principle. In this Council there Religious Symposium. 403 have been frequent references to the creation. Let me present the sub- ject on the same Biblical basis, but from a different interpretation. God, that is Father-Mother, said: “Let us make man in Our image, after Our likeness.” So God, Father-Mother, created man, male and female created He-She, them, and called their name Adam, a generic term signifying “red ;'' or, as has been interpreted, “the one who blushes.” In addition, the woman, possessing the feminine attributes of the Divinity, received a specific name, significative of spirit, of life: Eve in our translation, Zoe in the Greek, both signifying life, the one who holds or gives life, the life-giver, the creative principle, in which respect the woman possesses superiority over the man. - The Old Testament, falsely translated as it has been, full of mistakes and interpolations as it is known to be, is pronounced in its recognition of a feminine principle in the Divinity. The word Jehovah, too holy to be spoken by the Jew, was formed by the union of Jah-Eve, signifying both the masculine and the feminine, while El Shaddai, translated “The Almighty,” is used only when some action of the Divine nature express- ive of the feminine is required. Its external signification is purely feminine. During the lapse of ages and growing materiality of the world the femininity of the Divine was forgotten, its holiness, or wholeness, lost, and until again recognized humanity mourns. Various bodies, material and mystical, lament the “lost name,” among them, the Masons, the inner meaning of whose rites, not understood by themselves, is based upon it. Through ignorance, prejudice, and fraud, the feminine having been lost, God has been presented to both Jew and Christian as solely masculine. The wholeness of the Divine name will not be restored until the feminine is again recognized as a component part of the Divinity. The Lord's Prayer, “Hallowed be Thy name,” is an entreaty for the restoration of the “wholeness” of this name—for a recognition of the feminine in this name. It lies within the power of each person uttering this prayer to answer it himself—herself; and the remaining portions, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done as in heaven so on earth,’’ de- pend upon a restoration of the wholeness of the Divine name by a recog- nition of the feminine in the Divinity. By no external miracle is the world to be taught truth. The kingdom of heaven lies within ; each person can hasten its advent for himself, her- self. There is abundant proof that even under this partial recognition of the motherhood or femininity of God, women were officially recognized in the early ministrations of the Christian church. They were ordained to the ministry, officiated as deacons, administered the rites of baptism and the Lord's supper, promulgated tenets, interpreted doctrines, and founded sects to which even their names were given. From Marcellina, in ( & 404 International Council of Women. the second century (A. D. 160), a body of the church took its name. Her adherents were called Marcellinions, the same as the followers of Huss, Luther, Wesley, Calvin, and Swedenborg, at a later period, have been known as Hussites, Lutherans, Wesleyans, Calvinists and Swedenbor- gians. Although the writings of Marcellina have shared the fate of many canonical books, having been lost, her memory has descended to us fra- grant with the deeds of a good life. As Deborah was the only Jewish ruler whom the sacred scribes, historians, and prophets passed by unrebuked, So we find the memory of Marcellina free from calumny and reproach. Her life and her doctrines were in accord. Maxamilla, a prophetess, also lived in the second century—the latter part, about A. D. 190. Her writings are not extant. The present version of the New Testament mentions, by name, women who preached, and to whose services the early church was largely indebted. In the latter half of the fourth century and first half of the fifth the woman deaconate of the East had reached a position of great importance. All the later Greek Fathers—Basil, Gregory of Nyassa, Theodoret, and others—refer to it, and notices of individual deaconesses become frequent in church annals. By the sixth century the office of deaconess had become entirely sacerdotal, forming a link between the secular and spiritual clergy. As part of this body, they were addressed as “Most Reverend and Ven- erable.” Even as late as the seventh century this office was common in the Christian church, the Synod of Constantinople, in Tivoli, 691–2, promulgating a canon fixing the age at which both men and women could receive ordination for the deaconate. At this date women still adminis- tered baptism, as we find from a work of John Moschus, entitled “The Spiritual Meadow,” which, appearing at the end of this century, referred to the office of deaconess in conjunction with the baptism of women. - As the centuries passed on and the idea of a purely masculine God gained strength, we find woman continuously losing her representative place in the church. From the fourth century canons were promulgated by various councils forbidding, first, her ministry and service at the altar; next, the deaconate and the right of performing baptism; yet, even then, her services were permitted at the bedside of a dying person in case no masculine priest was present. But very early a division had occurred between men and women in the church upon the subject of baptism, women claiming the right to baptize their own sex. At this ordinance the candidate was divested of clothing, anointed with oil, and other ceremonies practiced for driving out demons, with which all the unregen- erate were supposed to be infested. Man having separated himself from a belief in the femininity of God, continually degraded women in the church, as is shown by the action of these various councils. That of Laodicea (A. D. 365), by its eleventh Religious Symposium. - 405 canon, forbade the further ordination of women to the ministry, and pro- hibited them from even entering the altar. In the action of these coun- cils, proof is shown that woman did not willingly relinquish her rights in the church. The Council of Orleans (A. D. 511), one hundred and forty- six years later, promulgated a canon excluding women from the deaconate, but the history of the church proves them to have continued in this office, especially in the Eastern church, three hundred years longer. But the earliest European churches made great distinction between the purity of man and woman, even while women still possessed functional rights in those bodies. By a decree of the Council of Auxerre (A. D. 578) women, on account of their impurity, were forbidden to receive the Eucharist into their naked hands. They were also forbidden to sing in church on account of their inherent wickedness. In the sixth century (Macon, A. D. 585) a council was held whose chief subject of discussion was the possession of a soul by woman. While upon one side was the determination of women to maintain their position in the church, upon the other side was the whole masculine power of the church sustained purely by its continuous teaching of the superiority of the mas- culine, the inferiority and subjection of women. The struggle was long. Despite the increasing loss of spiritual knowledge and the entrance of Europe upon that prolonged era of mental and moral darkness, when from the seventh to the eleventh century individual thought was so far crushed that not even a heresy arose; despite the action of councils and the con- certed effort of the church for depriving her of spiritual power—we still possess historical proof of woman's serving at the altar and administering the sacrament until the ninth century, when the Council of Paris (A. D. 824) again took the subject into restrictive consideration. - From that moment the darkness of Christendom became profound. Neither science, art, nor literature flourished; history itself died; and we know absolutely less of Christian Europe from 800 to I IOO, A. D., than we do of ancient Egypt 3,000 years ago. When the feminine was wholly proscribed, the night of moral and spiritual degradation reached its greatest depth, and that condition ensued which has alike been the wonder and despair of the modern historian, but whose cause is easily discernible to him who reads aright. The church, while in word proclaiming the unity of God, had in reality passed over to idolatry in a worship of the masculine. In place of truth, falsehood prevailed; in place of unity, division. Has not the time, therefore, fully come for women to take council together ? Has not the time come for an inves- tigation of the principles of religion ? Has not the moment arrived for woman to see the truths of nature for herself? Has not the time come for her to interpret the Bible herself? Shall she longer consent to remain a subject and isolated portion of humanity ? For many cen- 406 International Council of Women. turies woman lived under the ban of silence. In the inmost recesses of her own heart she knew herself to be a component part of humanity— the chiefest part, inasmuch as through her life is ever preserved. But for long ages, to speak was death; even thought was controlled, and the bondage of her will seemed absolute. The world had lost its equilibrium, and its descent become easy. But balances can not forever descend ; “There are two poles to the extremes of man's nature.” The night of ignorance, credulity, and despair is nearly at an end; the dawn is at hand; the feminine will soon be fully restored to its rightful place in creation and in religion as well as in law, in the divinity as well as in humanity, we shall find recognition of the sexual duality of all life, of the motherhood as well as the fatherhood of God. The world is full of vague unrest; the people, the church, the state all have premonition of some great crisis at hand; but neither church, state, nor people see this crisis to be an entire revolution in religious thought regarding the feminine. The hour of this spiritual change is at hand. One of the most notable signs of this crisis is the recent formation by women of a society for the moral reformation of man—the White Cross. This is the more notable as the past action of the church has created two codes of morals ; the strict for woman, the lax for man. In the White Cross for men, and its kindred Silver Cross for boys and youth under sixteen, the same moral responsibility, the same purity of conduct is demanded of men that is required of women. A second and more recent sign of the world's spirit to-day lies in the call for an International Scientific Congress of Catholics, soon to convene in Paris, whose wide list of subjects of such nature as a century or two since would have condemned a man to the stake for heresy, has received the sanction of Pope Leo XIII. In this programme, drawn up by the leading French scholars, are such questions as “the authenticity of the Pentateuch and the prophecies,” “the bases of morality and right”—to which end all of Herbert Spencer's studies have tended—“the origin of life,’’ and “a textual criticism of the New Testament.” When the conservative Mother Church endorses a council of her chil- dren, among whose objects are criticisms of the New Testament, and inquires into the authenticity of the Pentateuch and prophecies of the Old Testament, the world is in the midst of a tremendous religious revolution. And when in addition to this Catholic action we find Protestant theolo- gians of prominence, with Bishop Carlisle at their head, engaged in a discussion as to the original form of the Ten Commandments, or “Ten Words,” and eliminating from the tenth as an interpolation all that por- tion in regard to a man's wife, his ox, his cattle, and all things that are his, leaving it simply “Thou shalt not covet,” surely the spiritual en- franchisement of the world is at hand. - Religious Symposium. 407 In view of all the past and present continuous revisions of the Bible and its many thousand acknowledged mistakes and interpolations, whereby not only the Ten Commandments are found wrong, and also the most cher- ished portions of the New Testament, as the Sermon on the Mount and the Lord's Prayer, are proven to have been added to, it is folly to expect from women an undoubted belief in man's theological statements and biblical interpretations. Man has lost his power over woman. Mr. Moody, the evangelist, de- clared he found men a hundred-fold more receptive of his teachings than women. For fifteen years he had preached a sermon in the afternoon to women, and the same sermon as far as possible to men in the evening, and in nine cases out of ten with inconceivably greater results. The right of private judgment possessed by women in the early Chris- tian church, as we have noted, although afterwards denied both to women and to common men, was in reality the great lesson of the Reformation, although not yet fully conceded to the women of to-day. The world is alive with religious questions. The purity of the church is ques- tioned. A tree is declared known by its fruits, says the London Zable, and asks what is the actual and practical good of the professed Christianity of England at this present time, with the land absolutely seething with want, misery, ignorance, and vice in their most degrading and debasing forms. Even in this country conservative men are demanding a new class of clergy more in accord with science and the spirit of the hour. Charles Francis Adams, in an address before the Social Union of Amherst College a few years since, bewailed the unprogressiveness of theology, declaring the need of a fresh class of clergy for the benefit of man's education. If such a fresh class of clergy is needed by men, how much more by women, against whose moral and material rights the interpretations of the Bible and the whole force of the church have been directed for nearly 2,000 years. The religious teachers of the present day need to be brave and liberal persons, possessing knowledge of science, history, and the laws of evolu- tion. They need to be persons—they need to be women—who shall dare break away from all the false traditions of the middle ages, fearless in preaching the truth as to the absolute and permanent equality of the feminine with the masculine, not alone in all material, but in all spiritual things. Miss ANTHONY. I now have the pleasure of introducing to you the Rev. Antoinette L. Brown, who, as I have said to you before, was the first woman ever regularly ordained as a minister in this country. WHAT RELIGIOUS TRUTHS CAN BE ESTABLISHED BY SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY P Mrs. BROWN BLACKWELL. In presenting a theme like this upon an occasion like the present, a few explanatory words are needed to indicate the fitness of the subject for the occasion. 408 International Council of Women. Nearer fifty than forty years ago a young country girl began to realize that many active workers in various reforms, and men occupied in differ- ent lines of investigation, were tending away from the religious orthodoxy of the day, and that the positions taken on both sides were often incon- sequent. At that time the girl was sincerely though liberally orthodox; but she had an intuitive disbelief in the monstrous doctrine that to the male sex only is delegated the duty of investigating truth, and judging between the true and the false, with the corresponding duty of instructing others. She recognized an impulse towards exactly that vocation for herself; and she began diligently to qualify herself, as well as she could by study and research, to stand on an intellectual level with the best edu- cated minds. - She had one solid basis for a creed. With not a shadow of a doubt that religious truth had been specially revealed, she recognized the actual Universe to be an exposition of truth which no one, whatever his opin- ions otherwise, could have any right to discredit. She distinctly made it the final test of opinions. After a full course of theological study she began to investigate the established principles and facts in many depart- ments of science, supplemented, where direct verification fails, by logic and philosophy. From then till now she has been trying to answer the question, “What religious truths can be demonstrated without help from a special revelation ?” This paper is a very brief statement of conclusions. Can Nature reveal an Intelligence who deserves to be named Good or God? Is 'He the Creator 2–that is, Did he condition and establish related Nature with her modes and processes 2 We have reason and feeling. Animals, even plants, are clearly of our kin. The frost-work on our windows and all physical products seem kindred also. They follow methods so like intelligence no one can wonder that primitive men thought there must be some directive wisdom behind. Science shows us that everything follows its own innate laws and tenden- cies; that Nature of herself can go on progressively and work out her own destiny. But science has not yet decided whether these innate laws and tendencies have arisen spontaneously, or whether they began, with time itself, as dependent parts of one rational plan, devised and inaugurated by Original Intelligence. Motion is one of nature's measured quantities, and mass—the exten- sions or tensions of matter—the other. These tensions are often called matter, and the motion, force. We distinguish them as “bound ’’ mo- tions and “free '’ motions; both working energies, with action and reac- tion between them, equal and opposed. We hold that all changes of every kind are, in their last analysis, atomic changes; that they are inter- nal rhythms, motion on their physical side, and emotion, conscious or sub-conscious, on their mental side. Religious Symposium. 409 Whenever by an adapted combination of rhythms any atom can take the initiative in promoting, through its sentient phases, motions complex, subtle, rapid and delicate enough to lift it into the domain of higher feel- ing, it may become self-conscious! As material, it is a rhythmic atom, co-operating with countless hosts of other atoms in one larger combined system. But it has now become conscious of its own heritage. If the Eternal Self-existence is only unconscious power, and law and process only mechanical results, then we can expect to find in nature no sufficient evidence of a rational adjustment of change to change in the grand harmony of dependent organic motions and emotions. We can expect to find no convincing proof that emotion or consciousness—per- ception, feeling, thought, purpose, in all their vivid, varied experiences— is but the other side, the higher phase of one created rhythmic progress We can not hope to prove that the living changes in a distinct personal consciousness—conditioned inseparably with changes in space—are so attuned to the more facile types of vibration that when it throbs respon- sive to these from its chief seat among the grand organic harmonies, it may become as one of the gods in its own rational enjoyment. - But if Intelligent Power has related all rhythmic changes in such ways that certain ultimate persistent rhythmic systems, impelled, guided, and aided by their relations, can rise into distinct, actual self-consciousness, we ought to be able to discover and verify that fact. If nature, as a whole, has been so constituted that, soon or late, it will surely be evolved into a universe, not like this of to-day, admirable and grand as this already is, but into a universe such as this will be hereafter, a universe such as we ourselves can already forecast in ideal, then we ought to real- ize that great sustaining truth. The vital intelligence and benevolence of the vast related scheme should be found ingrained in the deepest constitution of conditioned being and in every detail of its related activities. By diligent searching we ought to be able to find satisfactory evidence of a consistently rational plan and of a wholly beneficent method of achieving it. We ought to be able, soon or late, to demonstrate these reassuring truths to the satisfaction of all minds competent to weigh the evidence upon both sides. But so long as we continue to interpret Nature's processes in coarse aggregates, then—very much as by the aid of our senses alone we see only those things which are coarse-grained enough to become sensibly visible, and hear only those sounds which vibrate slowly enough to quicken our physical organs of hearing—we shall be able to see not very far beyond the superficial appearances. No great advance in knowledge was ever gained except by looking with other eyes than those of sense. No one has literally seen the law of gravitation or the revolution of the earth upon its axis and about the 27 410 International Council of Women. sun. Science can verify the truths which at first were insight, inference or hypothesis; but weights and measures can not fathom the profound meaning of rational principles. One may fail by attempting too much. But Browning says, “What I aspired to be, comforts me.” Existence is essentially force or power. It is power to exist and to act. When related being is called matter, as it is by materialists, then matter is interpreted as having the efficient quality of force. When called force, by idealists, then matter is placed among its modes. Thus philosophy affirms either that the self-existent is power, or that it has power—a dis- tinction more verbal than actual. The merest baby shows that he instinctively recognizes power to be the common element in every related change. To cry and laugh is energy expressed in crying and laughing. Every feeling, every thought and act, every object, every motion, is some mode in which power is manifested. We instinctively discriminate the power in each change from the method through which the changes are produced. Then, if Uncreated Being is essential Power, created things may be the methods in which this abiding Power has chosen to relate, and through these relations to limit and direct some of its own activity. The absolute Total can add nothing to itself; it is the all; but if it be Intelligent Power, it could voluntarily forego the unlimited use of any part of its own activity. Creation might be, not something added to the absolute, but something virtually subtracted from its exercise ; disused in an unlimited sense, and so related that it can be utilized only under established conditions. If essential power were so appropriated, it would, to that extent, be not ac- tually, but practically, given away; given to the conditioned beings who could use it only under the imposed regulations; its uses would be their 11S6S. We continually limit our own activities; but if we are wise, we do it only for wise reasons. If we are benevolent, we voluntarily give of our energies to benefit others. If there be a Supreme Intelligence, we can hardly assume that, in establishing a persistent conditioned universe by limiting the exer- cise of His supreme power, He has been less wise or less benevolent than we ourselves often are. If creation is the result of a rational choice, of a realized intelligent plan, we should be compelled to believe in the benev- olence of the established scheme, even before it was positively demon- strated. But the whole remains simply a question of fact: Can the actual uni- verse prove or disprove the hypothesis that creation is a free gift to cer- tain conditioned beings, to little living systems of rhythmic activities, conditioned in joint dependence and several-sided in manifestations 2 By using the energies thus conferred upon them, such conditioned beings, the rhythmic atoms of our theory, would be allied both to the Religious Symposium. 411 matter side and to the mind side of the existing universe. Their endless changes would be both simultaneous and successive alike as motions and as emotions. This only means that the internal atomic relations necessi- tate equal action and reaction at once in space, in time, and in living sen- tience. With each change of motion would arise a related feeling more or less vivid. Would not the rise of consciousness in such a being be more kindred with its origin than the unsentient or motion side of its changes? The special methods in which it can act must begin with its relative constitution. It must start with a first-related motion and a first- related emotion. It must gain distinct self-consciousness, if at all, as it gains personal knowledge and all other experiences, progressively and increasingly. The rhythmic atom is a method, an endless process. In consciousness, it must be an endless progress, if it continue to exist at all as a distinct system of related changes. No one can affirm in advance that relative existence may not be consti- tuted in accordance with a benign scheme similar to the one we have out- lined. If it be, immortality, personal and conscious, is as firmly assured to each of us as is the indestructibility of universal nature. Our person- ality is atomic, not organic. Of course one can only suggest the line of evidence in confirmation of the theory, in a brief paper like this. Its first, most verifiable, and most crucial tests must come from the facts, prin- ciples, and laws of the physical world. If it can pass that ordeal, psychical explanations and the relations of mind to matter will add confirmation too strong to admit of further question. Then can we intelligently state the nature of the rhythmic atom on its matter side? If we can, will it explain compound physical processes satisfactorily? - Science is steadily reaching the conclusion that the atom of matter is a persistent unit, with tensions and motions; but it has no distinct theory of the exact relations between mass and motion. It holds that emotions arise with organic, possibly in some elementary degree with inorganic, physical changes; yet, illogically, the so-called materialists argue that sentience arises not only with, but from, compound substances as their resultant properties. But every system, large or small, must change exclusively within itself, whether its changes be motions, emotions, or both, though its changes must be modified by its co-operations. If there be persistent least units of changes at ail, then all changes must be solely, inherently, atomic. Atomic lines of tension, extending indefinitely outward, or grouped around the atomic center, seeming to have position only, equally stand for mass, and are composed of bound or equilibriated motions. Free motions run along these tensions, or go elsewhere; but always leaving reversed motion or increased tensions as an equivalent. No atom can part with any portion of its proper energy, acting either as tensions or as free motions. Nature, as a total, can neither increase her tensions nor 412 International Council of Women. her free motions, but in any part there may be more bound and less free motions, or the reverse. The combination of atoms generally results in increase of tensions and liberation of motion, with commensurate modifica- tions of the atomic rhythms. This means related modification of all pro- cesses, motional or emotional; but not the transfer of atomic changes from the atom elsewhere. Will you for a few minutes try to imagine a pulsating star of energies, with every ray alternately expanding and contracting from a common center. Think of each ray as stretching outward and back again through a given space in a given time. Imagine that while half of the rays are expanding the other half are contracting. Each pair of these opposed vibrating rays becomes a pole or axis of the atom ; but as it has many axes balancing it in all directions, though it is vibrating in every part, it is centrally at rest, and can only be moved from its position by some out- side power. Now, what can this rhythmic complex unity of motions be supposed to make plainer and more credible in physical processes? Re- member that it is more indivisible than the inside from the outside of a sea shell, or the strings from the AEolian harp. It is an equilibrium of motions, so delicately balanced that to disturb the adjusted action and reaction at any point would throw the whole into a confusion, which would become annihilation to the changing dependent system. Let us suppose a myriad of such simple yet complex atoms to be put into a chemist's retort. Their extending poles meet, clash, or strike, end to end. They must rebound; that is, repel each other. The amount of repulsion must depend upon the force of each collision, that upon the ex- tent of each polar expansion before the contact, that upon the greater or less crowding of like particles. Could not our expanding and contracting poles, with their exact normal balance of energies, thus mutually inter- fering for want of room, explain the facts of gaseous distribution, the laws of pressure, and all the various phenomena of gases, without the need of gratuitously endowing small masses with any power of self-translation, of attraction, or of repulsion, such as larger masses do not possess? The tensions of any one gas being equilibriated, “saturated,’’ other gases could enter as into a vacuum, if their poles vibrate upon other lines. Our rhythmic atoms have varieties of type, and even, possible unlike modifications in response to outside energies, in the same type. If the extending poles of different gases within a limited space be thought of as stretching past each other from opposite directions along closely parallel lines, any foreign motion evidently might shake them together. Both lines of tension are groups of bound motions, which would easily become entwined. Each pole, on its return vibration towards its own atomic center, must pull against its neighbor; a tense compound line will result, molecule. and draw the two combining atoms into one larger equilibrium—the Religious Symposium. 413 This necessitates readjusted rhythms, which become new properties to our answering sensations. This process is called chemical combination. Chemical action varies indefinitely in details; but in chemical union there is increase of tensions, with liberation and distribution of heat mo- tion, while in chemical disunion heat is absorbed and the tensions are decreased—each pole being freed from the pull of its neighbor. Adjusted polar vibrations would explain the facts of varying affinities and atom- icities, without calling in the aid of occult predilections of one sub- stance for another. There is a definite combination of two or more poles, each pole moving from its own atomic center both before and after it has combined with its neighbor. Each modifies the motions of the other; so that there is more bound and less free motion between them after the union ; but each atom still energizes for itself, and it has neither more nor less energy than before. Chemical action has been regarded as a special kind of influence, but our theory reduces it to plain mechanical combination. The motions are atomic, and generally vibrations rather than translations, but they obey mechanical laws. They are only new associations among inconceivably delicate harmonies of motion. If the uniting tensions can so far push and pull together in the same directions that no apparent change of physical properties results—that is, if the sum of the combined tensions and mo- tions remains unchanged, as when like particles combine to form a solid, we call that class of unions cohesions or adhesions. The difference is not in the kind of energies in action ; it all depends on whether they pull together or pull against each other. Now, let us recall that, while one-half of the atomic poles extend, the others contract. Various associated tensions may thus arise from the union of poles within the same atom. Gases have indefinitely-extending poles; but pressure or the removal of heat, by crowding together outgoing and incoming poles till they combine with opposed tensions, must produce immense contraction. This accounts for the change from gases to fluids. Friction and similar foreign motion, by combining poles of the same or of different molecules in such ways as to force co-operation in one direc- tion, with more or less of stress and constraint, must compel a commen- surate reaction somewhere. This explains static electricity, electric dis- charge, disruptive action, and stress in the dialectric. The magnet has a permanent separation of the outgoing from the incoming poles, with so much bending of their lines of vibration that they co-operate in a con- tinuous circuit. Metals become good conductors by a permanent partial polarization. Electrical currents and their interfering fields of force have similar explanations. Light, heat, sound, and all motions radiated or conducted along uncom- bined atomic poles move in straight lines. They also can be variously 414 International Council of Women. polarized, but only by sending them against or through substances which are themselves under a constraint from tensions in definite directions. All radiated motions, by quickening the rates, extend the amplitudes of polar vibrations without changing the time of beats. They all tend to decrease tensions and increase polar elongations. Compensating lines of energy must steadily tend to increase tensions and decrease polar elonga- tions. Equal action and reaction compel this; but the principle explains gravitation with its strength of energy wherever tensions are aggregated and its inverse energy as the distance increases. Rotary motion has no place in simple atomic rhythms, yet it is easily taken on either by atoms or compounds. The universe is a vast equi- libration of ceaseless changes, every one of which necessitates some unlike compensating change. The ether of space transmits all lines of energy. It is a vast field, where uncombined vibrating poles produce tensions not unlike those of a saturated gas in a confined space; but a special ether is not needed to explain the terrestrial operations of light, heat, or electricity; and by abolishing it here as an hypothesis, we abolished the almost insuperable difficulties of explaining its co-operations with ordinary matter. - Every change arises under the irreversible law of necessity, but with wide opportunities of varied action within definite limits. No fact is more obvious to science, or is found to reach more widely into all processes, than that of an appreciable variability under like conditions. Fluent energies are inherently opposed to rigidity in action or reaction. They have special adaptations for compensating variations. Thus only could they accept emergencies coming in any mode from any direction, by radiations as various as the incident forces. This allows sufficient lati- tude to intelligent volition whenever a conscious atom recognizes its own possibilities. Besides providing for a steady general evolution, it confers dignity and value upon individual life and makes character in large part a personal acquirement. It sets a moral value upon conduct as good or bad, and it supplies motives, enforcing them by inherent penalties and rewards. º Not till the conscious mind can measurably control an organism adapted to its needs does it become distinctly self-conscious. A type of feeble but ever-recurring sentience, without memory, seems to exist and to have its own values. Nascent feeling certainly reaches far down in the scale of development. We ourselves have a sub-consciousness of many kinds and degrees, sleeping and waking. In sleep, the organism impels the mind, often driving it into random activities. It does this in waking hours if we are off guard. But it is the privilege of the conscious side of every individuality physically well provided and aided, to take the helm and steer, at least in mild seas and when there are no tempests of passion Religious Symposium. 415 and temptation. Even with a feeble hold upon the co-working forces, one can acquire a God-like self-control. The mind side of the rhythmic atom seems to me less difficult to com- prehend than the matter side. A motion is a change from there to here in space, but it is also change from then to now in time; then why not the related side of change from that feeling to this feeling 2 The feeling arises in sentience and in time. Time, the common function, relates the motions to their associated emotions. The two are distinct in kind, but never separate in time; and not two changes, but the two jointly-dependent aspects of one change. We know the space and time sides of every motion to be distinct, but never separate. We know the conscious and time sides of every feeling to be distinct, but never separate. But it is equally certain that, as motion and emotion—two sides of the same change in a common time—they are distinct, but never separate. What has so long blinded us to this obvious dependence P Surely nothing except tradition and inherited primitive belief. Inter-related, arising as one progression, they are the indivisible sides of one several- sided conditioned activity. Together they are an endless, serial progress of changes in every atomic history. Co-operation varies the modes of the atomic process; it changes the internal adjustments; but there is in each atom a rhythmic unity of changes absolutely personal to itself. A long line of physical ancestry, increasingly organized, prepares a human brain for its proper sovereign. Human consciousness does not come single and alone into conscious life. Analogy offers convincing evidence that it will not plunge alone and orphaned into the life to come. All life is immortal life; conditioned life is progressive personal experi- ence. Like Archbishop Paley's watch, our rhythmic atom of dependent relations compels belief that Intelligence devised and established its won- derful co-operations. It demonstrates the need of a rational Creator. It makes Him surety for our personal immortality, with enough freedom of action to offer a solid basis for the growth of mental and moral character. It ensures an ever-enlarging, conscious experience. It guarantees the possibility of an ever-increasing happiness with ever-enlarging social sympathies. It confirms the lesson of fraternity, which makes men brothers and helpers of each other. It proves even the humbler four- footed and no-footed folk to be our near kindred. But it makes us akin also to Omnipotent Power, which is in all conditioned being. Can we ask for more ? Miss ANTHONy. The next speaker on the programme is Mrs. Caroline H. Dall; but as she is not present I will introduce Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, of Illinois. ‘‘ GOD IS LOVE.’’ Mrs. HARBERT. Is it not a hopeful fact, that the foundation principles of 416 International Council of Women, religion are so divinely simple, that although one is limited to ten minutes, the attempt at statement is made 2 We are told that notwithstanding the fears and strenuous opposition of his men, one of our generals, who had real faith in God, in the power of truth, the omnipotence of love, went unarmed into the presence of an Indian chief, who had always decreed death for any “pale face” who should dare approach him. Please study the scene. The powerful, so-called bar- barous chief, the unarmed apostle of “peace on earth, good will to men.” “You have a Father in heaven,” was the tender assurance of the “pale face.” A gruff assent from the chief. “I have a Father in heaven.” Again the gruff response. “Listen. If you have a Father in heaven, and I have a Father in heaven, and there is but one Father, one ‘Great Spirit,' then you and I are brothers.” The soul of the Indian was reached by those three sentences of love. Tears streamed down his face as, clasping the extended hand of the general, he recognized, by gleams of that “inner light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world,” the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, and the love to God and humanity that “make the whole world kin.” Love is the creative principle, the basis of everything permanent and real in character, thought, and morals ; not what we think about God, Christ, and humanity, but the degree of our love and faith, is the vital fact. But how do we know, in this world of so many apparent contradictions, that we do “live and move and have our being '' in a Creator who is infinite in goodness, omnipotent in love? (1.) By the interior perception, by the spiritual in all ages, races, stations, and conditions. Can you, dear friends, wander alone into the mysterious presence of a starry night, and there say truly that you believe the miracle enfolding you, the result of chance P (2.) We believe the Creator is good, because of the universal love of life, his gift—the dread of death, of annihilation, and the desire for immortality. This could not be true unless, despite the shadow of error—which is but our failure to appropriate the good—life is a good gift. We are souls, not bodies. “The Kingdom of Heaven is within.” Evil is but our failure to appropri- ate the good. In the emancipation of the spirit from materialistic fears, lies the freedom which the world has struggled to obtain. As in the Indian chief, as it was with the thief upon the cross, so in every child of God, created in the image of the good, is the immortal soul—the spark of life. True, because it is soul ; immortal, because it is true. There is nothing disintegrating in truth, hence no soul can ever die. The mortal, error and falsehood disintegrated, is lost away from the soul—in fact, being false, a negation, never had any real existence. There is no death ; what we call death is a glorious birth, as witness even the statements of thousands made, just as the spirit puts aside the earthly mask. But what of the strug- gle, you ask. The moment we begin to see clearly that life is but a rapid Religious Symposium. 417 journey toward an eternity of joy, that friendship, love, and spiritual development, are the eternal verities, the entire aspect of the struggle changes. A scientist received from a friend a rare specimen of the emperor moth. Impatiently he watched and waited for the day when the worm should emerge from the chrysalis. At last the struggle commenced. Slowly the worm began to emerge through a small aperture. The scientist, impatient at the delay, took a sharp knife and cut the film skin and the worm crawled out. Then he discovered his mistake. Only by passing through the small aperture could the substance of the body of the worm be forced into the wings of the insect. Thus in our effort to appropriate the good do we develop the wings of love by which we can soar away to the realms of the loving. “Still the great mystery remains,” some one may be thinking— the mystery of our creation. Do we not find it in this thought? The maternal and paternal instinct are of divinest origin. The father and mother are spirits lonely, with no children to love and care for. Hence we are the offspring of Omnipotent Love, and do we not begin to see that an Omnipotent Spirit of Love, knowing life to be a divine gift, could no more desist from creating than refrain from loving 2 Oh, beloved, the simple statement, “God is love,” is the spiritual key which unlocks every mystery. Let us, in the closing hours of these inspiring days, voice again to the world the angelic benediction, “Peace on earth, good will to men.” We accept as a foundation principle, that we become in character like the God we worship. If we worship a God whom we believe is partial toward his children, then will we and the laws reflecting our thought, be partial, discriminating, hence unjust and oppressive. Therefore, the speed- iest way to bring justice, righteousness, peace, and liberty to the world, is to lead the nations to the worship of a “God of Love.” - Fettered by materialistic thoughts, many are blinded to the spiritual veri- ties being revealed. As a most suggestive thought in this direction, I quote the following remarkable sonnet from Blanco White : - Mysterious night ! When our first parent knew Thee from report divine, and heard thy name, Did he not tremble for this lovely frame, This glorious canopy of light and blue 2 Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew, Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, Hesperus with the host of Heaven came, And lo! Creation widened in man's view Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed Within thy beams, O Sun ? Or who could find Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood revealed, That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind 2 Why do we then shun death with anxious strife 2 If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life? Let us also reflect upon this wonderful prophecy, made by one of our beloved pioneers, Sojourner Truth—thoughts revealed to her inner conscious- 4 18 International Council of Women. mess after she was one hundred years old, she being unable to read or write: “We talk of a beginning, but there is no beginning but the beginning of a wrong. All else is from God, and is from everlasting to everlasting. All that has a beginning will have an ending. God is without end, and all that is good is without end. God is a great ocean of love, and we live and move in him as the fishes in the sea, filled with his love and spirit, and his throne is in the hearts of his people.” Some may claim that this philosophy conflicts with the letter of some parts of the Bible. Let us not forget the statement that the letter killeth, but the spirit maketh alive. We were endowed with reason before we were enriched by Bibles, else we could not distinguish between the false and the true. When the young man came to Jesus with the most vitally important question, “Good Master, what must I do to inherit eternal life P’’ what was the answer P Listen and tell me if I have not the highest authority recog- nized by the Christian Church when I say that all true religion rests upon the statement, “God is love.” Listen to the answer of the Christ. “Why callest thou me good? There is but One good, that is God.” And, again, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself; on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” “God is love,’’ and love is the executive force of the universe. Love is God. Miss ANTHONY. As Mrs. Livermore is engaged in preaching twice to-day, she has excused herself from coming here this afternoon. I must say that one of the most encouraging signs of the times is the eagerness with which the min- isters of Washington have seized upon our women to preach for them morn- ing, afternoon, and evening. It wasn’t so in the olden days After the singing of James Montgomery’s beautiful defini- tion of “Prayer,” Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker addressed the Council. - Mrs. HOOKER. On this Easter Day the thought that I would like to fix upon all our minds is that the great work of the Prince of Peace, whose resurrection morning we celebrate, was to bring immortality to life. * * * I am, friends, (I believe in telling the truth about one's self and not hiding it), a Christian Spiritualist. I am also a scientific spiritualist, and Supported by Alfred Russell Wallace, whom I put at the head of English-speaking scientists, I make the assertion that the doctrine of immortality is absolutely proved by science and by precisely the same methods as are used to prove any other scientific truth. So to-day we claim that under the name of Occultism, Theosophy, Christian Science, Mind Cure, and metaphysics, the philosophy of Spiritualism is being illustrated and the great doctrine of immortality brought to light. Being asked what effect this has had on my own religious belief, I have formulated a little confession of faith for myself, and if you will listen to this, it is all I have to say: Religious Symposium. 419 First. I believe in one first great cause of all things, whether of mind or matter, soul or body—the Creator in whom we live and move and have our being as incarnated souls, and whom the nations and peoples of the earth have worshiped as the great “Sky Father ” since time began. Second. I believe that the whole creation of mind and matter “groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now,” and always has groaned in these travail-pains, which were and are the birth-pains into a more glorious life, even the new heavens and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, and that according to the deeds done in this body, will these pains be lengthened or shortened in the life to come. “If thy right hand offend thee cut it off;” it is better for thee to enter into spirit life maimed than, having two hands, to go into hell (hades, or the land of spirits), fire that never shall be quenched, “where their worm dieth not and their fire is not quenched;” which means that when the spirit molecules have set toward selfishness, all the days of our incarnation, they will keep to their drift eternally, when dis- robed of the flesh, except the tide be turned toward holiness by some power greater than ourselves. In the God of the Hebrew and the Christian, the Buddhist and the Mahometan, alike, we may recognize the all-wise, tender, brooding Mother Spirit of the Universe, under whose providential discipline, called evolution by the scientist, and fore-ordination and decrees by the theologian, all souls shall at last reach their culmination and become crea- tors in their turn. For by the depths of the love we bear our own children, by our capacity for self-sacrifice, not only for those we love, but for those who are not our own, but only of our race or country, or even of the family of man, we may take hold of our ultimate destiny, and know for a certainty what we shall be when the ages of the future shall have wrought upon us as the ages of the past have done. “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be.” Third. I believe that matter, not less than spirit, is permeated by the Divine presence, which, working in all things according to the law of its being, whether material or spiritual, is bringing to pass the wonders of cre- ation which we behold, and of whose infinity in moments of inspired vision we catch a glimpse. In all this the Eternal One would not be alone, and could not, by the very nature of benevolent being. Hence we, his offspring, are called, each in our way, according to our ability, to join in this glorious work of creating a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteous- ness. And by so much as we join hands and hearts with the disembodied souls who have fought the good fight and finished their course here below, and held communion with them on these great themes, we shall be mutually strengthened and encouraged in the redemptive work to which we are all consecrated, whether we know it or not, by the great, Divine Over-Soul whom we reverently call God. And in the end we, too, shall become medi- ators, every one, between God and man, between mind and matter, between 420 International Council of Women. spirit and body, like unto Jesus of Nazereth, the great teacher, prophet, and prince of the later centuries. Miss ANTHONY. Mrs. Howe is on the programme to speak to us this after- noon, but I do not see her here. I now present to you Elizabeth G. Stuart, of Massachusetts. THE POWER OF THOUGHT. Mrs. STUART. I come before you as a member of the organization known as Humanity: passport to that organization, Spirit of Truth; basis of work, Common Sense ; theory, Evolution. What is truth? Pythagoras said, “Truth is so great a perfection that if God were to render himself visible to man, he would choose Light for his body and Truth for his soul l’’ Truth is one, with infinite expressions; expression implies limitation, while truth is unlimited. Truth rests upon the law of identity, established through the law of polar or real opposites and its twin sister, the law of contradictories, revealed to man by the science of numbers. It is to that science man must look for a solution of the problems of life in their varied relations. No science of ethics, which exempts the physical, can be true, since it makes man dependent upon the conditions of the body. No system of physics can be true which strikes from its premises the spiritual law, since it degrades morals to a dependence upon the physical. Man as a unit is gov- erned by one law through his entire being, spiritually, intellectually, and physically, ever in the one order from the higher to the next lower. The imaging faculty is the highest known to man ; through it he ex- presses the ideal, and it is the means by which he expresses to the senses whatever intellect accepts, thus forming the relation between mind and body. Through that open door fear enters and stamps upon the body distorted, untrue mental images, which physicians name, then proceed to try to erase from the body by physical means. It is a self-evident absurdity that a picture in mind can be removed by rubbing the body. Fear in the mind, from any cause, increases the heat of the body; and, as the thermometer rises higher and higher, we see the differ- ent degrees known as first inflammation, then congestion, ulceration, and SO O11. “As a man thinketh, that he becometh.” As is the mind, so is the thought ; as is the thought, so is the image expressed in form externally. Let him keep his picture-gallery free from impurity, who would have pure blood. Whatever he does not desire to appear in the external, must be watch- fully kept out of the mind; once there, its picture hangs upon the inner walls, ready for the favorable moment to appear. The imaging faculty is both cause and cure for all bodily discord. Miss ANTHON.Y. Let me now introduce to you Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney, of Boston. - - - Mrs. CHENEy. I never feel quite free to refuse to bear witness to the faith Religious Symposium. - 421 that is in me whenever I am called upon, because it has been the experience of my life, that words that have been dropped without any idea of their weight and importance, have sometimes fructified in human hearts and borne good fruit. So that, happily, however weak the voice, we may reach some heart and do it good. And on this beautiful Easter Day we should all like to do that if we could. As I sat listening to the creed of our friend, Mrs. Hooker, I thought of the two great principles of religion which are so often expressed by my great teacher, Theodore Parker, the “fatherhood of God and the brother- hood of man,” and it seemed to me that those two sentences would com- prise, as well as anything I could say, the thought that I would like to leave in our hearts this afternoon. With him the fatherhood of God always meant the motherhood, too. It was his almost universal custom to begin those deep and tender prayers, which dwelt in the memory of his hearers as a blessing all through the week, “God, our Father and Mother both.” And so, when he said the brotherhood of man, he meant always as we mean when we say it—the brothers and sisters both. This has seemed to me a most religious meeting all through the week. For though we have said very little about these great religious truths in their abstract expression, the whole drift and tone of the speeches have been in the recognition of those two great truths. I think when we have asked for equal rights and equal opportunities for women, it has been because we have always remembered that woman was the child of God just as much as man, feeling that the poorest and most wronged member of this human race, was our brother and our sister; and so we can carry these great truths always in our hearts and our lives, and they are truths that we all can unite on. Perhaps I love the subtleties of meta- physics and theology just as well as any one. I can enjoy them intellectually, but I think we can all differ in those. We can all come back and unite in these great truths of religion which lie at the base of all morality; and if we could only carry them out into works we should find, if we added to them the wisdom of experience and the wisdom of thought, that to-day they struck the key-note; that they resolved all our difficulties and all our differ- ences into harmony. I heard yesterday that some one sent a message of regret that this meet- ing took place in Holy Week; but it has been a holy week to those who are not wont to think that religion depends on times and seasons, but on conse- cration to right purposes and to great philanthropic and human enterprises; and I trust it will live long in our memories, and that we shall date back many again for humanity, and see that it was begun in this week that we have spent together in our National Capital, which we trust may be redeemed from all that is debasing, all that is immoral, all that is wrong, and hereafter be pointed out as the city of God, where right and justice prevail. Miss ANTHONY. There are a great many on the platform who want to 422 International Council of Women. speak and give their highest thoughts as to the true life and true theory; but we shall have to stop, and before we close I would like to call your attention to the grand motto, which the great leader of this movement, Lucretia Mott, used to write in the albums when the young people came to her for autographs, which was, it seems to me, the basis upon which all our investigations with regard to the present and the future, with regard to God and man, should be founded. Her motto was ; “Truth for authority; not authority for truth.” It seems to me that the great danger to the race is, that as fast as we are emancipated from one authority, we drop into another, whether it is founded in truth or not. Hence, friends, I feel that the work for women to-day, in religion, as in every other department of thought and of action, is to make truth their authority. I want to call your attention to two pamphlets, which, through mistake, have been pushed aside with the abundance of literature that has been cir- culated at the door. The first is entitled “The Outlook for Woman,” a sermon preached by Dr. James C. Jackson, of Dansville, N. Y., but a short time since. The Sentiment that he has placed on the title-page is : “Thou, from on high, perceivest it were better All men and women should on earth be free; Laws that enslave and tyrannies that fetter Snap and evanish at the touch of thee.” This little pamphlet Dr. Jackson had printed and sent down a thousand copies to be distributed among the friends in attendance upon the Council. I hope you will take one as you pass out, and, when you have read it, give it to somebody who needs it. One great work in all this reform is to possess ourselves of all the literature on the question and pass it around. The other pamphlet is a letter to the International Council of Women at Washington from Josephine E. Butler, of England. You all know that is worth reading. Last Sunday afternoon was appropriated to the women who had had the hands of men laid on their heads in ordination. This afternoon we have devoted to the highest utterances of women whom men have not ordained, excepting Antoinette Brown Blackwell. I want to call on Miss Wil- lard, but perhaps we ought to stop here. [Applause and calls for Miss Willard.] Well, Miss Willard, come forward and tell us what you think about true religion. Miss WILLARD. Dear friends, I am of a most excursive sort of mind, naturally very difficult to train and to prune, especially on spiritual subjects. I remember, as a little girl, when this dear old lady, now in her eighty-first year, was a student at Oberlin, and my mother was a student there, too, although she had three little children around her. Father and mother went there after they had their family. I was playing around with my toys on the floor, and my mother pointed to me and said: “ Mrs. Hills, there is Frankie ; she is my little infidel.” And Mrs. Hills was shocked at my mother, because Religious Symposium. 423 she thought it was a fearful thing for her to say. But my mother was a very wise woman ; she knew I was a kind of intellectual trout, and she fished and angled after me a good deal, humoring my coy ways, and never seeming shocked when I told her my outreachings of spirit this way and that. Some- times I used, in my audacity of nature, which has been very much tempered in later years, I used to try to think up something that would scare mother and make her think that I was going to be very bad, but I never could. When I had misbehaved and wasn’t good and nice as a little girl, she always used to say: “Why, they have brought in some changeling ; some peddler has dropped a strange child here ; where is my nice little Frances P’’ So, then, it didn't pay to be ugly. And when I would say my very daring things about not believing, and asked her how she knew that Book was a true Book, that was on father's knee every morning at family worship, she never troubled to give me any particular answer, but would stroke me on the head, and sometimes break out into a sweet old hymn ; I was very fond of hymns, and I think mother won me by the singing of the faith she loved. When I went to school we had our twilight hour, and my teachers, some that I loved especially, would come into my room and bring in some other girls, and they would have an evening sing out of the hymn-book, for when I went away to school it was given out in the prayer-meeting the very first time my name was mentioned in Evanston, where I have lived thirty years and been a good Methodst twenty-nine of them, that here was a young woman of some promise, of a sort of adventurous nature, and she was an infidel, and they hoped the people would pray for her ; but they didn’t take me and try to shape me and put me into a place, for I am pretty sure if they had I should not have gone into it, but it was so sweet at home, and mother didn’t have any canting ways of talking, and I knew mother couldn’t be far wrong, and so I think that the divinity that she was to me, and my father’s earnest life brought me into a way that otherwise I might not have known. I should have been one of the easiest to have gone into the paths that mother would have grieved over. And while to all I have heard to-day I have listened reverently, sisterly, kindly, just as the women are now listening to me—they are just as willing that I should speak my deepest thoughts as I was willing that they should— still, I will tell you how it is with me. I go like a bee into the gardens of thought; I love to listen to all the voices, and I go buzzing around under the bonnets of the prettiest flowers and the most fragrant, just like this bee, and when it is a lovely life and a Sweet life, like the lives of those who have spoken to us to-day, it seems to me I get a lot of honey; but I have a won- derful bee-line fashion of carrying it all home to my own Methodist hive. I couldn't do any other way. I am made that fashion ; it is part of me. It is worked into the woof and warp of my Spirit, the result of the Sweet old ways in which I was brought up. I should have to deny myself in my 424 International Council of Women. inmost heart, if I didn’t believe what mother had taught me at her knee. If I didn’t, above all the teachings and all the voices, reverence the voice that calls to me from the pages of the Bible; if I didn’t, above all things and always, in my mentality and spirituality, translate God into the term of Jesus Christ. I can not rest except there. And so I frankly tell you how it is with me this sweet Easter Day. The inmost voice, deep down in my heart, says: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit ! Receive it as I sit here listening to women whom I love and revere and honor for their loyalty to what they believe is the highest and best. Receive it as I go forth into the crowded ways of life with so many voices calling me on every hand. Receive my spirit ! It will be the last thought that this brain will think, it will be the last quiver of this heart that has ached and rejoiced. “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit !” Miss ANTHONY. This evening will close the sessions of this eight-day Council, and Mrs. Wallace has left the platform because she felt she could not perform her duty this evening if she remained here any longer. Mrs. Stanton has been absent from this platform so much of the time yesterday and to-day, because she is preparing her last words to the Council, as to its meaning and its results. So I hope you will all feel that the very best of the whole week, is to come at the last session this evening. I must say just here, that to me it is perfectly splendid that all these women who have spoken this afternoon, each one having a glimpse of what seems to her the great truth, can come here and express their highest thought with a feeling that they do not wish to force anybody else into thinking just as they do. That is the lesson which this Council has taught to-day. Women are not so narrow but that they can come together and talk over their religious beliefs, and see down beneath the whole, the true spirit, the true woman, and be ready to work together in spite of their differences. Samuel Longfellow’s beautiful hymn, “The Church Univer- sal,” was then sung. Adjourned. SUNDAY, APRIL 1, 1888. EVENING SESSION. c Los E o F T H E co UN cI L. Invocation by Mrs. Mary H. Hunt. The CHAIRMAN. The delegates to this Council, representing over fifty organizations, of different nations, yesterday, in meeting assembled, adopted constitutions for permanent Councils of Women, both National and Interna- tional. The basic principles were very nearly the same, and you may read the constitutions, the officers elected, and the incipient steps which have been taken by this Council, in the Woman's 77-iöune of a later day.” Mad- ame Bogelot will now read you her first English words—a farewell to us. Madame BOGELOT. Ladies and Gentlemen, Madame President : At the beginning of your International Council you have lent to me good will in hearing my notes in French language. They expressed the sentiments of my heart, and gave a description of the works of my society. But I grieve very much not to know your language, especially as I was alone to represent my beloved France, your sister. Everywhere and always I have found here sympathy and helpfulness. Also I have listened to your discourses with a very great attention. My head is broken, but my heart is very happy because I know you will be glad in hearing me tell it in your own language. I will return in fifteen days, but I shall visit, before I go, the Baltimore, Philadel- phia, New York, and Boston prisons. If I find your prisoners better cared for than ours, I shall pray my French brothers to imitate my American brothers. Excuse my audacity. I try to speak English for the first time. Accept expression of my sincere gratitude. To speak English is to be of your family. Not forget me. I not forget you. I thank also my friend and expounder, Miss Bradley, of New York, doctor of Paris faculty. Madame Bogelot’s broken English was received with great appreciation, and the hearty applause conveyed to her the sym- pathy and congratulations of all. - The CHAIRMAN. Miss Allie Trygg, of Finland, an associate of the Bar- oness Gripenberg, who has been ill, will Say a word to you, also in English. You will remember that at the opening of this Council, she gave us her greeting in her native language. Miss TRYGG. When I, last Monday, had the honor to speak to you from this platform, I was obliged to do so in my own language because it was *See report of Committee of Arrangements. 28 426 International Council of Women. impossible for me to speak in English. Now I will try to say a few words in your language, for you see, among all the wonderful things this Inter- national Council has done, it has even beautifully improved my English. I must, however, beg you to excuse my language and not mind the grammar or pronunciation. Only think of the feeling of my heart. Ladies and gentlemen, I come from a little poor country, far in the North of Europe. Many of you have, perhaps, not heard the name of it, although I, to my astonishment, have found that you here in America know much more about our country, than in England. This country is Finland. Europe is old, but contains many countries yet young in culture. Our little land is one of these new-born in culture. I must, how- ever, inform you that we have the most northern railway in the world. Everything there is new and young; that is also the case with the woman's question. I leave to you to decide how old it is, in telling you that I am one of the pioneers there. But, although it is young it is full of life. This is evident in that we have sent two from this little distant country, when so many richer and larger nations have sent none. As I wrote to Miss Anthony when inviting me to the Council, “An International Woman's Congress has always been the great dream of my life.” Since the hour I read in my country's newspapers about this Council, I had rest neither day nor night before I was sure I could come. How joyfully I hastened over the ocean l No, I did not hasten, because I came by the oldest and slowest of the Cunard line steamers, but I hastened in my heart, and my only fear was that the reality would not correspond to my hope. It has always been so in my whole life, that where I have been waiting and hoping most, there I always have been most disappointed in my hope. But now here, the very first time in my life, it has not been as before. Here the reality has ten and a hundred times exceeded my greatest hope. Every day I have enjoyed more and more of what I have seen and heard. As I already have mentioned, the woman question is still new in Finland. It is a little baby, and we don’t know what shall be of it; we only have a sincere belief and hope in its future. And even this belief—I am ashamed to confess it—has sometimes failed me. I have seen my countrywomen and also the women of other countries, occupy their souls with insignificant trifles, instead of letting them grow for the work of the great questions of humanity. When I have seen that the chief purpose of their life has been to adorn their bodies instead of their souls, then I have sometimes felt very weak in my belief. You see, aiso, the strongest might sometimes feel weak. You remember that one of the greatest among them that are born of women, John the Baptist, when in prison, was seized by the spirit of doubt and sent his disciples to Christ to ask, “Art thou he that cometh, or look we for an- other?”. Then I crossed the ocean and came here. I have been with you. all these days, and since I have seen how you have loved, suffered, and Close of the Council. 427 worked, now when I can, so to say, touch with my hands the great results of women's work, I need not more believe and hope, now I know. “And when that which is perfect has come, that which is in part shall be done away; ’’ therefore I now have come to a point in my position towards the woman question as much higher than before, as knowledge is higher than hope. Therefore is my heart full of joy, and I feel quiet for the future, I can say with Jacob, when he returned to his fatherland from Mesopotamia, “Only with my staff I passed over this Jordan, and now I am become two bands.” As Jacob, I shall return to my fatherland, crossing the Jordan– or a water larger than that, as you know—richer, as he was, but my riches are better than his. I feel myself rich because I now have the sincere belief in women's love, women's power, women’s ability, women's energy, which never can fail. And for that belief I wish to thank you from the very bot- tom of my heart. - We in Finland have known only a little about your grand work here; but hereafter it shall not be my fault if the women in Finland shall not know more about you. As you have been a living sermon to me, you will be it for the other women of my country. If their feet should stumble, if their heads feel tired, their hearts discouraged, then you shall stand before us as the great patriarchs and prophets stood for the author of the Epistle of the Hebrews, when he showed his congregation all those who had with patience run the race that was set before them. And then when we are discouraged I will say to the women of my country, “Behold, on the other side of the Atlantic | There we have so great a cloud of witnesses who have struggled and won the victory. Lay aside every discouragement which doth So easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.” Hereafter there will be a golden cable of sympathy between you and us. Every victory you will win shall be ours; you work not only for the women of your country, but for the women of the whole world. I will not longer occupy your precious time. I will finish now, thanking you from the very bottom of my heart for everything; also, for the magnificent hospitality you have shown us. You have taken care as well of the bodily as of the spiritual part of us. I thank you for all that you have given me and my country through me. God bless your work! Miss Trygg is a very vivacious and earnest speaker, and her charmingly natural manner made her address very attractive. She was warmly applauded. Miss ANTHONY. And now we must have a farewell from Norway. Mrs. GROTH, I thank you very much for all your hospitality and kindness. Miss ANTHONY. I have a most magnificent thing to tell you this even- ing. There is a woman in this city who has authorized me to announce that she has appropriated a whole block, which she owns, to the establish- 428 International Council of Womer, ment of a great institution for the education of women. She has not decided the details, or exactly what it shall be, but it is for the education and development of women, intellectually, morally, spiritually, politically, and every way possible. The woman is “Olivia”—Mrs. Briggs—who will devote her beautiful “Maple Square” to this glorious work for the uplifting of women in this country. This announcement was received with great applause. Miss ANTHONY. I introduce to you now a Mother in Israel, Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace, of Indiana. - Mrs. WALLACE. I am announced on the programme to give you an address upon the moral power of the ballot. I shall ask your indulgence for myself, as you often are asked for other public speakers, to allow me to take my text and leave it. Possibly I may cross it at right angles before I get through ; possibly not. You have witnessed in the last week in this city a wonderful spectacle, the first on record in the history of the past, where women from ten nationalities have met in council and upon this platform, to plead for freedom for them- selves in the name of and for the good of humanity. Who, shall tell, my dear friends, the significance of this meeting, and who shall tell what will be the results? It bodes good, and only good, to the race. There has been nothing more misapprehended by the public than this effort which women are making to secure for themselves the blessings of political freedom. And right here I say to the gentlemen of this audience, that we acknowledge the obligations which we are under to you. Only in these United States of America, where freedom has done so much for manhood, and manhood has done so much for womanhood, could such a meeting as this be possible—the freest nation in the world, where a thought once born goes reverberating around the globe, will never stop in its march till all humanity is free, and until this tree of liberty, which was planted more than a hundred years ago by our forefathers, watered by the tears of women and the blood of men, shall take deep root, and all the nations of the world shall bask under its branches. It is the privilege, nay, not only the right and privilege, but the duty, of every human being to be like God; that was the intention and the purpose from the beginning, to create humanity in God’s image, and that work is going on to-day. But the one requisite to the success of that work is that humanity must be free, enjoying liberty, not license ; liberty under law, enacted by its own volition. That is the distinguishing characteristic of God. He alone, of all beings in the universe, governs himself by self-im- - posed laws. And humanity, by virtue of its descent from God, is crowned king. It is not mind nor class nor race, but humanity, that is the king of the universe. And humanity, by virtue of its relation to God, is immortal. The first requisite for this building which the Great House-Builder had in his thoughts in the ages of the past, is freedom. Next to freedom is knowledge, Close of the Council. 429 and next to knowledge is faith in the moral powers of the universe; faith in God ; faith in our own origin, and faith in our own destiny. As I look over this magnificent continent and this great heritage which God has given us, I feel that here humanity is to work out this grandest of all problems, the ability of the race for self-government. I know that the men of this nation have struggled grandly (and succeeded, in a meas- ure) to work out this problem. But you can not do it, dear brothers, without the aid of woman. Woman is one-half of the great whole, and she lies at the base of all human progress. The greatest and grand- est evolution of creation will be humanity perfected in the image of God; and if it took ages and ages to create this world as a fit habi- tation for man in his animal and material conditions, how many cen- turies will it take to perfect man himself? So I regard this whole question as a growth. I am never discouraged. I work and bide the working of the forces which I can see already put in motion, which shall consummate the pur- poses of the Divine. This Council is no small indication that that purpose is nearing its completion. Speaking of the great inheritance given us upon which we are to work out this grandest of problems, we are to-day the richest nation by hundreds of thousands of dollars of any nation in the world. We could buy out Russia, Austria, Norway, Sweden, Australia, South America, Africa, and almost all the nations of the earth, dollar for dollar. Does anybody believe that God has given to us such a heritage as that for our own self-aggrandizement? that we are to fold our arms about us and enjoy this heritage alone P No ; he has given us this under the most favorable conditions, and we are expected, nay, it is our duty, under the Divine Providence, to work out here this problem and demonstrate that we are able to govern ourselves; that we are not only to do that, but we are to magnify God’s wisdom in our creation. I am not one of those who believe that humanity is to be a failure, and this republic to perish from the earth. The merest tyro in business would not have put forth such energies as God has put forth for humanity, if it were to be pro- nounced a failure. No, dear friends, never lose faith in that power outside ourselves first, but incarnated in ourselves now, that is to make for righteous- ness. You may say that is like a woman, full of fanaticism, full of emotion. But what is it that distinguishes personality from force—dead matter | A gentleman said here the other day that he believed he was cut out for a woman, because his emotions ran away with him. It is emotion, it is mind, it is thought, it is feeling, which distinguishes humanity from brute force. Not only does it do that, but it shows us our relationship to the great First Cause. If we, his offspring, have personality; if we, his offspring, have mind; if we his offspring have thought, and feeling, our Father has also. We heard arguments to-day as to what Science would do outside of reve- lation. I want no higher science than I read right here to convince me of 430 International Council of Women. my relationship to the great Infinite. But in order, dear friends, to work out successfully this great problem which God has given us, we must bring our laws into harmony with his will. And what is that will? “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that none should perish, but all should have eternal life.” This is the will of God— that we work for humanity. Christ recognized, when he was here, that any work done for humanity was done for him. And if humanity would gov- ern itself, if it would be like God, it must work for the benefit and advance- ment of the race. The great apostle tells us that our faith shall be swal- lowed up in knowledge, and hope, in fruition ; that love is the immortal passion that endures forever; love only is immortal, and if we would be like God, if we would reach that immortality that he has in store for us, if we would reach that development of character which it is his purpose that we should reach, our hearts must be permeated with love to him first, and we must love our neighbor as ourselves. We hear a great deal about the growth of civilization. Dear friends, what is civilization ? In what does it consist P Does it consist in your marble palaces P. In your railroads; your electric lights ; your telephones and tele- graphs? True civilization is to deal justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. When the Christ was here, he was approached by a lawyer who asked him what he should do to inherit eternal life. “Love the Lord, thy God, with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself.” “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so unto them.” This is the law and the prophets; these are the two greatest commandments. And do I say too much, when I say that for these commandments to permeate and influence our lives, is true civilization ? - Dear friends, take the practical application of the philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth to-day and apply it to all the problems that are confronting us. How long do you suppose it would take us to solve them 2 First of all, if the men of this nation would do as they would like to be done by, we wouldn’t have to stand here pleading with you year after year, now forty years, asking you, under a government which derives its just powers from the consent of the governed, to clothe us with the ballot. If you loved us as you love yourselves, you would make us equal with you in all the privileges and blessings of this great nation—I will not say great republic, because it is not a republic; the world has never yet known a republic. A republic is a gov- ernment of the people where the power rests in the hands of the people, and one-half of the people of this Government have no power in it except a surreptitious, or indirect, or irresponsible power, which is always detrimental to those who exercise it, and detrimental to those upon whom it is exercised. If we loved our neighbors as ourselves, and did as we would others should do unto us, how quickly would these knotty problems of labor and capital be solved It doesn’t mean that one class shall love another class to the Close of the Council. 431 exclusion of itself. You may love yourself as much as you like, provided you will let that love which you have for yourself, be the measure of your love for me, and you will never wrong me and I shall never wrong you, if we take that measure. I am glad to see that the secular press in many in- stances is coming to the conviction, to use an old proverb, that “honesty is the best policy,” and that it pays to do right. We think we have a Government based on public opinion. We have not. The women of the nation have little or no voice; not only that, but the public opinion of the men does not govern in our great cities. At least if it does, we have some pretty bad men to govern us. We know to-day that our republican institutions are a failure in our great cities, and that we are governed not by public sentiment, but by an armed police. One of the greatest thinkers of this continent asks: “What is to be the future of this nation, when we become New York all over?” We talk about the voice of the people being the voice of God. If that be true the voice of God has never yet been heard in human government while one-half the race is silent. Now, gentlemen might ask me what I promise them will be gained by giving women the power of the ballot. I have not said that I believe woman will solve this question affirmatively. I have said, though, gentlemen, that I do not believe you can do it without her aid. But my faith has grown so strong in the last ten days that I shall say that I believe woman will solve it ; you, with her aid, will solve it affirmatively. Miss ANTHON.Y. Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, President of the National Woman Suffrage Association, and, by virtue of that office, President of this Council, will now address you. Mrs. STANTON. In closing this International Council of Women I have been chosen to bring in the unanimous verdict, “A complete success from every point of view.” The immense numbers in attendance at every session prove the interest the public feel in what the women of the nation have to say. The harmony and order of the proceedings, considering the varied interests represented, and the widely-different opinions of the Convention, prove that women are ready for combined action. The discussions, covering a wide range of Sub- jects, showing much thought and research, have been highly creditable to our speakers. The large majority of the papers have been worthy the occa- sion, delivered in a round, full voice, and heard in every part of the house. The moral tone of the speeches has been unexceptionally of a high order. The paper read last night by Helen Gardener was an unanswerable argu- ment to the twaddle of the scientists on woman's brain. The facts she gave us were so encouraging that I started life again this morning, with renewed confidence that my brain might hold out a few years longer. I have always said I did not wish to go into the kingdom of heaven disfranchised, and have looked forward with pleasure to introducing myself to St. Peter at the 432 International Council of Women. gate as an American citizen, and Helen has made that hope seem practical. The reports given of the work done by women in the fifty-three* different or- ganizations represented here have filled us all with surprise and admiration, and the more, when we remember that women have had to force their way to every vantage-ground they hold. Though ever willing to do the drudgery of the world in all philanthropic reforms without praise or pay, yet, thus far, they have literally begged for the privilege of helping to mitigate the miseries of mankind. This beautiful auditorium, decorated with the flags of each of our States and the various nationalities, is a fitting frame for the historic picture of this International Council. Happy are those who have lived to see this day, when so many different countries are represented on one platform. A letter received from a Nihilist this morning adds Russia to the list. This letter is from Prince Kropotkin, who suffered five years' imprisonment under the French Republic for advocating the cause of the people. The bravery and endurance of young Russian women in the dungeons of St. Petersburg and the mines of Siberia, in their struggles for national liberty, prove triumph- antly that woman knows how to die for a principle. I had the pleasure of meeting both Stepniak and Prince Kropotkin in London, and in a long in- terview of three hours they explained to me fully what Nihilism means in Russia. I think those who have read Judge Kennan's articles in the Century will readily accord all praise and honor to the noble Russian women who have so courageously identified themselves in the struggle for freedom, and expiated their love of liberty on the scaffold. Letters from so many countries in the Old World show that this Interna- tional Council has awakened new hopes in all for united efforts in the cause of the common people in every nation on the globe. The contrast between the first convention of women ever held and this, marks the growth of forty years, and if the measure of our duties is in proportion to the vantage- ground we hold, our demands for human freedom must be far broader than they were forty years ago. For the first convention all the preparations were made in a day. A notice as long as your finger was printed in the county paper calling the meeting for the next week. This and a few private letters were all the notices given. But the Methodist church in which it was held, was crowded, and the proceedings were abundantly ridiculed by the press from Maine to Louisiana. I shall never forget my astonishment at having the dream of my young life so severely ridiculed. The demand we made was so rational, the justice so apparent, that I thought the simple state- ment would convince every one. - The Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the spirit of English law as set forth by Blackstone, the genius of republican institutions, all seemed to make the position we had taken in the Convention so unassailable, * See pages 49 and 50. The New England Hospital for Women and Children, Delegate, Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney, was, by mistake, omitted from this list. Close of the Council. 433 f that we were wholly unprepared for opposition, much less ridicule. We felt as you can imagine a body of soldiers in a strong fortress would feel if, knowing themselves, with their high walls, cannon mounted, every approach impregnable, every outpost guarded, safe beyond all peradventure they should suddenly find themselves undermined and the earth beneath their feet giving way. Our principles all swept away by the breath of ridicule, there was nothing to stand on. Our best friends laughed at us and were ashamed that any of their kin should be identified with such a movement. Now all is changed. Busy preparations for the International Council have been going on for a year. Hundreds of letters in the way of consultation and invitations written ; hundreds of documents published and scattered ; thou- sands of dollars raised for expenses, and the most beautiful edifice in our Na- tional Capital secured for the Council. Now, friends press us warmly by the hand and shower blessings on our heads, and the tone of the press in gene- ral is complimentary, and thus it ever is. The highest truth uttered to-day, though startling to some ears, will be verified in the near future. We can not overestimate the moral effect this Council must surely have on women them- selves, on the nation at large and on the world. It must have a marked influence in giving us all broader charity for the differences of customs and opinions, arousing good feeling, and helping forward the day when all inter- national difficulties will be settled by arbitration. - The Queen of England last year held her jubilee, when the nation poured out its wealth and laid most costly presents at her feet, when all her subjects in every land, and the isles of the sea, were taxed to do her honor. This year the queens of America have assembled by the hundreds to hold their jubilee, to lay their richest gifts of intellect, of moral and spiritual power on the altar of their country. From all ranks of life, from the halls of science and the workshop, from the trades and professions, they have come, one after another, to tell in glowing words what they have done in deeds of charity, in philanthropic enterprises, in the industries, in education, in literature and art, to glorify our great republic. No one could listen to the grand women who have voiced this progress of the last half-century, without a feeling of pride in the nation that has made such women possible. And now, in this year of our jubilee, what do we ask in turn, of our country P. That all artificial barriers that in any way cripple our freedom, be thrown down, and that all the opportunities for self-development that the country affords be secured to us ; unjust laws repealed, the most vener- able colleges thrown open, an equal code of morals for men and women, and jurisdiction in Our courts over all that class of crime which belongs spe- cifically to women. We ask an equal right to regulate everything in the outside world that affects the moral status of our children ; the atmosphere of our homes, Schools, and the streets of our cities; the science and philos- ophy taught in our colleges, the theology in our churches ; the true princi- 434 International Council of Women. ples of political economy in government. We do not wish to have our sons taught any theories in college life that will lower their respect for women. We do not wish to have them taught in the church that woman was an after- thought in the creation ; that marriage for her is a condition of slavery, maternity a curse, and her proper position, ever one of subordination. All these basic ideas affect the character of our children and their estimate of woman ; hence we should have a voice in the system of education, of relig- ion, of government. For the men of the nation we ask the intelligent, conscientious counsel of wise women. If you would have men faithful in their duties to the State, cultivate patriotism in women. If you would broaden the outlook of man, making country ever first in his estimation, do not center woman's thought on personal and family aggrandizement, for where her thoughts are centered, his best efforts will be also. It needs but little philosophy to see that in proportion as the circle of woman’s sympathy extends itself beyond the family to her neighborhood, her. State, her country, and the world, will she inspire the men of her family with broader views as to the scope of govern- ment, as to all national and international questions. To this end we ask you to celebrate our jubilee by placing on woman's brow the crown of American citizenship, and in her hand the ballot, that great scepter of power for self- defense and protection. - I would press on your consideration, my sisters, to-night, not your right, but your duty to vote—to do your part in the great work of government. Suppose, by the death of a husband, a woman were suddenly left with a magnificent estate and a large family of children. What should we say of Such a woman should she leave her children untrained and uneducated, to play on the highway, and her estate to fall into ruin, left wholly to the man- agement of her elder sons, who robbed the younger children of their birth- right, wasting their share of the income in riotous living? The more grace- ful and refined such a woman, the more intelligent and gifted, the more gentle and affable, the more artistic in dress and pose, the more utterly con- temptible would she seem to us in her apathy and indifference to all the most Sacred duties of life. Our fathers and mothers have left us a magnificent inheritance bought with a great price. Together they shared the dangers of a stormy Sea in the little Mayflower, the dreary landing on Plymouth Rock, the rigors of a New England winter, and the privations of a seven years' war. In untold sufferings and self-denial they laid the corner-stones of this republic in jus- tice and equality; that here the lovers of liberty, escaping from the tyranny of kingcraft and priestcraft in the Old World, might enjoy civil and religious freedom forever. Everything was favorable for the grand experiment. Three thousand miles of ocean between us and the civilizations of the Old World, without a Close of the Council. 435 steamer or telegraph for two centuries, the savage and the wilderness our only obstacles, Man has done his material work grandly and well; he has ploughed up our prairies, bridged our rivers and chasms, with his railroads linked the Pacific and Atlantic together, made our flag respected in every harbor, and our internal commerce the wonder of the world. And now the time has fully come for woman to look after her inheritance, and share the responsibility of securing justice and equality to every citizen under our flag, lest the growing elements of discontent shall, in the near future, make it im- possible. Landing in New York two weeks ago, I saw four hundred steerage passen- gers leave the vessel. Dull-eyed, heavy-visaged, stooping with huge burdens and the oppressions they endured in the Old World, they stood in painful contrast with the group of brilliant women on their way to the International Council to be held here in Washington. I thought, as this long line passed by, of the speedy transformation the genial influences of equality would effect in the appearance of these men, of the new dignity they would acquire with a voice in the laws under which they live, and I rejoiced for them ; but bitter reflections filled my mind when I thought these men are the future rulers of our daughters; these will interpret the civil and criminal codes by which they will be governed ; these will be our future judges and jurors to try young girls in our courts for the crime of infanticide, for trial by a jury of her peers has never yet in the history of the world been vouchsafed to women, with two rare exceptions, Wyoming and Washington Territories. Here is a right so ancient that it is difficult to trace its origin in history— a right so sacred that the humblest criminal may choose his juror. But, alas for the daughters of the people, their judges, advocates, jurors, must be men, and for them there is no appeal. But this is only one wrong among many inevitable to a disfranchised class. It is impossible for you, gentle- men, to appreciate the humiliations women suffer at every turn. My joy in reaching my native land and meeting dear friends and family once more, was shadowed by that vision on the wharf and by the knowledge that by thousands still they come, and from lands where woman, as a mere beast of burden, is infinitely more degraded than by any possibility she can be here. Do you wonder, in view of what the character of our future law- makers may be, that we are filled with apprehensions of coming evil, and that we feel that there is no time to be lost if our Saxon fathers ever propose to throw around us the protecting power of law and Constitution? If native- born American men will not do justice to their own mothers, wives, and sis. ters, what have we to hope in the future of foreign rulers, with the low ideas of woman into which they are educated P. The next generation of women will not argue with their rulers as patiently as we have done, and to so little purpose for half a century. You have now the power, Men of the Republic, to settle this question by moral influences, by wise legislation. But if you 436 - International Council of Women. can not be aroused to its serious consideration, like every other step in prog- ress, it will eventually be settled by violence. The wild enthusiasm of woman can be used for evil as well as for good. To-day you have the power to guide and direct it into channels of true patriotism, but in future, with all the elements of discontent now gathering from foreign lands, you may have the scenes of the French Commune repeated in our land. In all the struggles for liberty in the past women have ever taken an active part, and it is fair to suppose that they will do the same in the future. Awake to their own wrongs, as they never have been before, and exasperated with a sense of the prolonged oppressions of their sex, it requires no prophet to foretell the revolutions ahead, when women strike hands with Nihilists, Socialists, Communists, and Anarchists, in defense of the most enlarged liberties of the people. And now let me ask you, my sisters, in all seriousness, are you satisfied with the rôle you have played during the last century of our national life? Go into the by-ways of our great cities and look at the swarming multitudes of children growing up in ignorance and poverty; look at the vice and mis- ery of their surroundings, and the disgusting filth of the streets and houses where they dwell. Go into our jails and prisons, and see the cruelties in- flicted on humanity there, all, places of punishment, rather than reformation ; go into our factories and see the worn and weary men, women and children, every nerve at the highest tension to keep time with machinery driven by steam ; go into our poor-houses, asylums for the deaf, the dumb, the blind, the lunatic, the idiot; go into our houses of prostitution, and consider well the causes of all these harrowing Social problems, and as you weep and pray over the sins and sufferings of the multitude, remember that all this can and must be changed, and that you have the same responsibility in accomplishing this change as the man by your side. This branch of government, regulating the morals of the people, belongs specifically to woman; and the first step to this end, is to make you believe that the happiness and prosperity of all the people of a nation are possible. Education and equal legislation can change all this and make our earth a paradise. We must have no more sermons from the text “The poor ye have always with you.” I heard a sermon preached from this text once, in which the preacher spoke of the extremes of poverty and wealth as a most beneficent arrangement of Providence, calling out the virtues of charity on the one side and of gratitude on the other. If the women of this nation will henceforth give all the thought, the time, the force, the enthusiasm, to the practical work of this life, that they have heretofore expended in speculations and preparations for the future, we might bring Sunshine into every home, open the prison doors, transfer all the heavy burdens from the shoulders of men to tireless machinery, and gradu- ally lessen the roll-call of the unfortunates. We have thus far had no end of trouble and anxiety about Saving the souls of the human family, and Close of the Council. - 437 heart-rending speculations as to the next sphere of action. Let us concen- trate our thoughts henceforth on the best interests of the masses here. Let us look after their bodies, teach them the laws of health and how to live. The best possible preparation for the next form of existence is to fulfill our duties here. I like Matthew Arnold's definition of religion. He says, “Religion is science touched with emotion.” I want women to feel that it is their religious duty to take part in government, the most exalted of all sciences; and yet women often talk as iſ it would compromise their dignity and refinement to vote. What are the great questions involved in government P Our relations with foreign countries, taxes, tariffs, finance, religion, education ; all ques- tions of social life, marriage, divorce, the rights of children, the sanitary conditions of our homes, schools, and cities. Now is it possible that a woman with the ordinary number of convolutions in her brain, and the usual amount of gray matter, can be unwilling to inform herself and express her opinion at the polls on such questions? It is this class of unthinking, conscienceless, women who go into fashionable society with low-necked dresses and bare arms, their persons so exposed as to make every modest woman blush. I remember once we held a convention in Newport in the fashionable sea- son. In the parlor, one morning, when it was filled with ladies, one of them said to me, “We attended your convention last night.” I said: “I am very happy to hear it. How did you enjoy it?’’ ‘‘Oh,” said another, “we enjoyed it very much ; but we rather shrink from the idea of a woman being exposed on a public platform.” “Why,” I said, “my dear lady, I came in here rather late last night, and, as I enjoy the harmony of motion and music, I sat here a little while and looked at you all dance. I saw you, with your low necks and bare arms, whirling around in the arms of gentle- men to whom you had just been introduced, and I thought you were shame- fully exposed. I should have shrunk from having a woman dressed as you were on the platform. You were much more exposed than we were.” “Oh, yes,” said she, “but the papers are full about you, telling everything you do and say.” “Well,” said I, “I saw you all this morning reading the pa- pers describing your dresses, your grace and beauty last night, and I pre- sume if there was one of you who was not mentioned you were very much disappointed. The only difference is, the papers tell what we say upon great questions; they describe how you look. I leave it for you to decide which is the more dignified. Where, I ask you, is a woman most exposed, walk- ing to the polls with her husband in her street-dress, or whirling in the arms of some other man in full ball-room costume P’’ I fear, under the domina- tion of fashion and superstition, we have much rubbish to clear away before we can get at the true woman. We shall hope much from the debates we have heard in this grand Council 438 International Council of Women. for the future womanhood of our nation. When I think of the magnificent experiment in government it is our privilege to try, and all the great prob- lems that await our solution, I feel that we need the united wisdom of every man and woman to insure our success. Galton, in his great work on “He- redity,” says “the brain of man is already overweighted with the compli- cated problems of civilization, and the race must be lifted up two or three degrees to meet them.” In every country we see the wisest statesmen at their wits' end vainly trying to meet the puzzling questions of the hour: In Russia, it is Nihilism; in Germany, Socialism; in France, Communism; in England, Home Rule for Ireland and the Disestablishment of the Church, and in America, Land, Labor, Taxes, Tariffs, Temperance, and Woman Suffrage. Where shall we look for the new power by which the race can be lifted up and the human mind made capable of coping with the daily-increasing com- plications of this new civilization ? Where shall we look but to the educa- tion, elevation, and enfranchisement of woman P. When she stands on an even platform with man, as an equal factor in government, there will be a flow and interflow of brain forces that will kindle all their latent powers, vital- ize their best thoughts, and give strength and dignity to their combined action in every department of life. On behalf of the National Woman Suffrage Association, under whose aus- pices this International Council has been held, allow me, before adjourning the Council, to thank the large audiences that have assembled here for eight consecutive days. Your presence has been very encouraging, and given us renewed inspiration in our work for the future. I trust, in turn, that all that has been said here has awakened your minds to the vital importance of the subjects that have been under consideration. While thanking our foreign delegates for the long voyage they have taken in response to our invitation, we can not find words to express the pleasure we feel in having them with us, nor the Sorrow we feel in parting. This has given us an opportunity, too, of meeting many of our own countrywomen engaged in the various reforms and industries; and of making many valuable acquaintances which I am sure we all appreciate. After this refreshing interchange of thought in which we have thrilled the hearts of each other, I trust we shall go forth with renewed consecration in our labors for the best interests of humanity, leaving the world better than we found it. The Council is now adjourned. L ETTE R. S. The following is the letter of the Russian Nihilist, Prince Kropotkin, to which Mrs. Stanton referred : RoxBOROUGH ROAD, HARROW on THE HILL, LoNDON, ENGLAND, March 12, 1888. Wom EN OF AMERICA : It is with profound sympathy that your labors have been followed by my compatriots, the women of Russia. At the two extremities of the civilized world the problem that presents itself is one and the same, to abolish the privileges that have been created for the benefit of one-half of humanity to the detriment of the other half. Under a despotic government, which considers the ignorance of its subjects as the best guarantee of its own supremacy and hastens to crush freedom of thought under whatever form it shows itself, the Russian women have, nevertheless, suc- ceeded by their persevering efforts in constructing a whole vast system of instruc- tion for their sex. For the institutes of old times (a sort of convents) they have substituted 430 lyceums, which at this moment contain 91,000 pupils. Under the title of lectures on the art of teaching, they have created for themselves against the wishes of the government, which found itself forced to yield, a course of secondary education, preparatory to the studies of the universities. And under the modest title of lectures for the “Higher Education of Women” they have created four universities, which were giving instruction absolutely equal to that of the best Ger- man and French universities to eighteen hundred students, when the government ordered their abolition. - They have done more. By taking an active and devoted part in the great move- ment for the emancipation of the people which has been taking place during the last twenty-five years in Russia, they have conquered their rights as citizens. It was by working to liberate the Russian people that they have prepared the way for their own liberation. They have shared all the hardships of the struggle, all the pain of the persecuted. In prison, in exile, in the mines, dragging their chains beside their brothers, they have known how to inspire them with their nerve courage, and they have pleaded their rights to be recognized as citizens by mounting the scaffold, like Sophia Perovskaya, with calm front and lofty bearing, uniting in her last words the names of her beloved mother and the Russian peasant for whose liberty she had lived. If it were not for the despotic government, which at this moment is harass- ing Russia by its furious pursuit of the very faintest mark of sympathy toward every flight of emancipating thought, Russian women would surely be among you to-day taking part in your labors and exchanging with you their ideas, their experi- ence, their confidence for the future. But it is not only as a Russian, a witness of the noble struggle of the women of Russia for liberty, that I permit myself to address you. Women of America, in your country, as in all civilized lands, you have the Supreme happiness to live at an epoch which history will certainly characterize as the epoch of the awakening of the masses; the epoch of the bold criticism of all the institutions bequeathed to us—children of the nineteenth century—by the centuries of barbarism and of war; the epoch where the march of humanity toward Equality and Liberty is leading us to Fraternity 440 International Council of Women. Living for more than ten years in the very midst of the European workmen, and having the opportunity to see, to feel this enormous intellectual movement that is now taking place among the masses; seeing day by day the birth of the great ideas of freedom and of fraternity in the bosom of those whom the rich and powerful have condemned to remain forever beneath their domination ; noting day by day for ten years the dawn of ideas, of rooted convictions, and of earnest devotion in the heart of the workers, and drawing inspiration myself from this glorious awakening, I long to tell you that at this moment it is all over with the system which condemns the masses of mankind to poverty, to overwork, to privation of all those pleasures of knowledge and of art that alone are capable of rendering human life a source of happiness; and all this to obtain leisure, wealth, luxury, for a mere handful among us. The system is condemned, and I affirm, in full knowledge of the surroundings in which my life is framed, that the century will not end before the toiling masses make a supreme effort to transform from beginning to end a state of things which is unjust, degrading, hurtful to human- ity, and a bar upon progress. - You will see this magnificent struggle of the workers for their liberation taking a more and more important and serious character. But on which side will you be found? What position will you take in the strife? Will you be on the side of the written law without asking yourself if this law be not contrary to justice? Or else will you be with those who struggle against the law—that miserable legacy of an obscure past—but for justice, for the equality of all human beings without distinction of class, race, or sex, the only solid base of true fraternity ? It is your duty to take a place in the struggle. You can no longer remain mere spectators if you desire it. The strife forces itself upon your notice by the gallows of Chi- cago, the fusilades of Paris, the exterminations of rebels in Ireland. But to take a part in the struggle you must know its cause; you must make clear to yourselves the meaning of this contest which is being carried on everywhere under the name of Socialism, beneath the shadow of the star-spangled banner of the United States, as beneath the shade of the imperial eagle of Russia, in the German monarchy as in the French republic, in the New World as in the Old. Under penalty of one day discovering that you are amidst the oppressors acting against the oppressed, you must find, for yourselves, the true signification of this strife between the rich and the poor, between workmen and capitalists, between the creators of social wealth and those who take possession of it. And when, after having gazed into the abyss of the suffering and iniquities of our existing Society, you return home and see there your ornaments, the luxury of your house, that lux- ury and those ornaments will disgust you, as they disgusted Sophia Perovskaya and so many others. You will ask yourself, “Whence comes this fortune 2 My father,” you will say, “worked.” But that girl who, with her weak frame shiver- ering beneath a threadbare gown, hurries each morning to the factory—her father worked too ! My husband writes: “The rich will hate you for this. They will pursue you with foolish abuse, with base insults.” No matter | They did the same to the first abolitionists. Are they not venerated to-day? Women of America, I personally belong to that great school of Socialism—anarchism—which seeks to free the human being from the yoke of authority, at the same time as from the yoke of capital. After having been with Mrs. Beecher Stowe, with your venerable Presi- dent, Mrs. Cady Stanton, in the vanguard of the good cause, will you ever admit the possibility of finding yourselves with the modern enslavers, hunting to death the revolted slaves of modern times 2 Away with the idea Letters. 441 During your Congress you will discuss the political rights of women, and you will find yourself face to face with this question: Man or woman—has the poor the same political rights as the rich 2 Girl or boy—has the poor the leisure for educa- tion, when from the age of thirteen or fifteen years he or she must exhaust an ill-nursed body in the mill, the mine, or the factory 7 Stealing education in the hours of necessary repose, can the poor take the part in the affairs of his or her nation, or city, that can be taken by professional politicians, who enjoy leisure be- cause they live upon the produce of the labor of others? You are about to study the judicial rights of women. You will censure such an unjust law as that which permits the man to seize upon the woman's fortune. But what judicial rights does the woman enjoy who has nothing but the shawl upon her shoulders, and who all her life has toiled to produce the fortune and provide the demands for the other, for the woman who never went near a machine, never lifted a spade 2 You are about to speak of that loathsome fact—prostitution. And you will be forced to ask yourselves, Why has bread been wanting for this child who sells her. self, when our markets are overflowing with corn ? Why has she, who is led to work, never been able to buy herself those dresses and ornaments which the idler's wife displays in the street? You are about to speak of the industrial condition of women, of their wages inferior to the wages of men. And you will be brought to ask yourselves why a woman accepts starvation wages at all. Is it not because all that she requires to produce new wealth—the soil, the instruments of labor, machin- ery—all that would enable her merely to live, have been appropriated by the minority? Good | But the husband of that other woman writes as much or more. Why has she to struggle against poverty in bringing up her children 7 And why, then, am I living in opulence? What are my rights to this opulence? “Is not my wealth woven of the poverty of my sisters?” But if this question confronts you, you will be forced to do as Sophia Perovskaya did. Flee this luxury; join the ranks of the - workers; bring them your enlightenment and your energy; aid them in their strug- gle for freedom. - - But I will not even attempt to convert you to my principles. Seek the truth for yourselves; judge for yourselves the divers schools of socialism, and, perforce you will be brought to join the ranks of militant socialists. The great mass of mankind groans beneath the privilege bequeathed to it by history. But here, as elsewhere, the grand martyr, the one who suffers most from this privilege, the one who bears the heaviest burden, is still, and is always, the woman. Rich or poor, maiden or mother, it is still the woman who bends lowest beneath the iniquities that weigh upon mankind. Work for her liberation. All our wishes, all our sympathies go with you. But you can obtain the complete liberation of women only by working for the liberation of humanity. - PRINCE PIERRE R ROPOTRIN. MARCH, 1888. We give a few of the letters expressing Sympathy with the demand for equality of rights for Women. 1 SOUTH OxFORD STREET, BROOKLYN, N. Y., March 2, 1888. DEAR Miss ANTHONY: Your letter received, and I am thankful for it, because it allows me the opportunity of doing two things: to send you hearty greeting for all the good you have done and are doing, and also to say that, notwithstanding any- thing you may have read to the contrary, I am, and always have been, in favor of woman’s suffrage. I advocate in my pulpit as well as in private the trying of the experiment, although I have not as much confidence as many of my friends in its - 29 442 International Council of Women. - power to eradicate the great evils of the day. The Government of the United States ought either to free women from paying tax or else give them the vote. Wish I could accept your invitation to attend your National Council and hear the great womanly leaders, but I must be elsewhere. May you always dwell in the light. Yours, truly, T. DE WITT TALMAGE. Port LAND, OREGON, March 22, 1888. My DEAR MIss ANTHONY: Although compelled, at the last moment, to forego the long-anticipated pleasure of meeting the International Council of Women in person, I cheerfully unpack my trunk and resume my home duties, content to meet you all in spirit, and in that way engage in the deliberations of the most remarkable assem- blage of my sex yet known to history. My heart throbs with quiet happiness, as, from my window looking out upon Mount Hood, with the ethereal blue of heaven bending to the eastward from above and around it, I think of the many members of the Council to whom I send greeting. From the programme before me, I judge that every other question will be amply considered by the Council except the one left to me, to wit, “Suffrage in the Terri- tories;” therefore I wish to say to your brilliant convocation from America and over the seas, that the women of the Territories are moving steadily toward the goal of liberty which the ballot alone can guarantee to any people. - In Washington Territory, where the suffrage was granted them by legislative enactment in 1883, and overthrown by judicial interference in 1887, the right was chivalrously restored to them in 1888 by legislative re-enactment in the face of the bitterest opposition ever yet encountered by equal suffragists anywhere. In Idaho and Montana, woman-suffrage sentiment is rapidly spreading among the people as a result of the successful experiment in Wyoming and Washington Terri- tories. It has already permeated every avenue of political thought, and that, too, without provoking serious or organized opposition from any quarter. In Arizona and New Mexico the question has thus far received comparatively little attention; but quiet preparations are in progress for effective work in those Territories, which will be openly and actively begun, as soon as the present plans can be completed for placing Idaho and Montana on an equal footing with Wyoming and Washington. Please say to the Council, including all the distinguished women from organiza- tions not yet committed to the idea of equal suffrage, that the men of the Territories, as a rule, are more generally imbued with the spirit and fact of liberty than those of older and more settled governments. Their conception of woman and her sphere has been enlarged by multiplied opportunities to behold her power as a helpmate for man, which, in a new country, is always expanding under the most trying circum- Stances. - The new country has ever been the cradle of liberty, and nowhere is this fact more vividly illustrated than in the Territories of America, wherein woman has been 'crowned as a sovereign citizen and openly acknowledged as the peer of her son, brother, husband, and father, to whose gallantry, chivalry, and liberty-loving mag- nanimity she is proud to be indebted for her present freedom. Yours, for universal liberty, ABIGAIL SCOTT DUNIWAY. NEW YORK, March 17, 1888. MY DEAR MISS ANTHONY : The deep interest that I have always felt in the or- ganization of our country’s progressive women, and which I especially take in this Letters. 443 International Council and the memorable anniversary it celebrates, made me eager to accept your invitation to contribute what I could to the discussions of its sessions. The place on your programme, which I accepted with gratification and pride, I now relinquish with an equal measure of regret, because those same industrial oc- cupations which I hoped to have the honor of discussing at your Wednesday morning session have not left me a moment's time to prepare, with credit to you or to my- self, for what would have been so pleasant a duty. The age in which it is our privilege to live has been remarkable for progress along many lines, but in nothing has there been more notable advance than in the popular recognition of the rights of woman, and the popular appreciation of her efforts for her deliverance from effete limitations. Woman is to-day a controlling factor in the life of every Christian people. The world acknowledges, even if it does not em- body in statutes, her sovereignty. It recognizes the possibilities which inhere in her nature, and it is opening on every side doors long shut and barred against her. She is making herself felt in its industries. She is the soul of its philanthropies. It is her touch that softens the asperities of prison administration, and her gentle ministrations lighten the pain and weariness of the hospital. It is her earnest faith that makes even the exile of the mission field a place of joy and triumph. In the grand moral controversies of the time—involving temperance, the purity of the individual and the home, the protection of childhood—woman occupies a foremost place. In literature and art and in education, how important is the relation which she holds to the happiness of mankind But there is much yet to do in this grand work of woman’s protection against the prejudice and rapacity which still harbor in little minds. Her industrial equality is not yet fully established. Unjust legal prohibitions prevent the utmost assertion of her ability. She is still denied access to spheres of usefulness in which she might achieve new and grander triumphs. But I can not doubt but that all this will be changed as the years go on. Truth makes her way slowly, it may be, but surely, because the eternities are hers. Agitation, discussion, conflict—out of these what- ever is true and vital comes at last. With my excuses and regrets, I am sure you will accept my heartfelt and most earnest wishes for the triumphant prosperity of the Woman’s Association and of its cause in every land. Promise of this is indeed given by the splendid array of names on your programme for the sessions of the week—names which fully reassure me, in the unavoidable withdrawal of my own, standing as they do in the light of the not unrewarded work of nobly-spent years. Faithfully yours, FRANK LESLIE. BANGé, MAINE ET LOIRE, FRANCE, March 5, 1888. To the International Council of Women—Elizabeth Cady Stanton, President : It is certain that such great meetings of women of all lands working for the eleva- tion and enfranchisement of their sex can not fail to have a good result. The progress made by the movement for the emancipation of women in America and England is an encouragement to us in our struggle against the prejudices which still surround us, and which we find it difficult to uproot in our old continent. In France, the number of women interested in this question is unfortunately small, and the number of those who have the courage of their opinions and are not afraid of compromising their interests by speaking openly, is still smaller. * * * 444 International Council of Women. The active propagation of the ideas of equity and justice, which will elevate woman to her proper position in the family and society, striven for so intelligently and valiantly by the dauntless women of the United States and of England, interests me greatly. The enfranchisement of woman is the chief aim of my life. To all those with whom I have so long lived in mind and heart, to whom I am personally unknown, let me send my best wishes for the complete success of their persevering efforts. Accept, madame, my most sincere regards and cordial sympathy, M. DUPUIS-VINCENT, One of the Organizers of the Society for the Amelioration of Woman’s Condition, Founded 1869; One of the Organizers of the French Union for Woman’s Rights; Working Member of the British and Continental Federation; Member of the In- ternational Association of the Friends of Young Women; Contributing Member of Manchester National Society for Women’s Suffrage; Member of the League for the Protection of Women; Member of the Federation of Women. SOCIETY FOR THE AMELIORATION OF THE CONDITION OF WOMEN AND THE CLAIMING OF THEIR RIGHTS, OFFICE, RUE CARDINET 72, PARIs, March 6, 1888. Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, President of the International Council of Women at Washington : SISTERs of AMERICA : We send you our cordial and fraternal greeting. We have read with deep interest of your project of holding an International Council of Women, the programme of which includes the examination of the laws and institutions which govern the condition of women. In every nation, even the most civilized, there exist still for women special laws which bear the imprint of semi-civilization. But although held in a state of sec- ular ignorance, woman has set herself to noble undertakings, in which she proves herself possessed of faculties and aptitudes equal to, if not identical with, those of the other sex. - Science, especially in the department of anthropology, daily throws new light upon this important question. Law alone remains almost unchanged in the midst of all these changes and advancements. At this present time there are laws which injure women in the very points on which their originators intended to benefit them. The female sex is placed in law with incompetents, insane, idiots, and criminals. Such laws are at once a denial of justice and a contradiction of the mission of woman. They contain a malicious attack upon her moral character, her dignity, and her material interests. The inferiority, created and legalized by the laws of so many nations, has been to women a crushing and humiliating yoke, which has blinded the moral perception of man and the intellect of woman. To enlighten the world on this great question which touches one-half of the human race, this is to dry up the source of the greater part of the evils which afflict society; this is to work for moral elevation; this is to re-establish, on an unchanging foundation, the reign of justice; this is to assure the happiness of generations present and to come. M. GRIESS-TRANT, MARIA DERAISMEs, President. LOUISE DAVID, Vice-Presidents. 40 UNIVERSITY ROAD, BELFAST, IRELAND, December 3, 1887. DEAR MISS FOSTER: It is quite out of my power to accept your invitation to at- tend the great gathering of Women in Washington in March. I regret it deeply, Letters. 445 for my special sphere is certainly different from that of any other delegate you are likely to have, and I should have been glad to have given some account of what we Ulster women have done in the last twenty years. We have, of course, joined in the general agitations of our sisters in Great Britain for women's suffrage, for the reform of the married women's property-law, for the repeal of the Contagious Dis- eases Acts, for the founding of university examinations for women, and eventually of their admission to university degrees. But we have some points of interest spe- cial to ourselves. You may not be aware that the very first woman who ever spoke in public on behalf of temperance in Europe, was an Ulster woman, Mrs. Carlile, the founder of Bands of Hope. From that time, fifty years ago, till the present, we have had an exceptionally high place in the temperance cause. The Women’s Temperance Association of Belfast, founded by my gifted friend, Mrs. Byers, of the Victoria College (who finds it no hindrance to leading the van in the cause of women's education, to be also a leader in philanthropy), has many branches through- out Ulster, and a membership of about 27,000. Very nearly the same ladies are engaged, in many different ways, in the defense of young girls, and the rescue of children from moral danger. In educational matters we have one considerable advantage—in the absolute equality of position and rewards for boys and for girls, in the intermediate examina- tions in Ireland. The credit of getting this equality secured, while the bill creating this scheme was passing through Parliament in 1878, belongs in large measure to the Belfast Ladies’ Institute, of which I was then honorable secretary. This scheme has greatly enlarged the opportunities for girls to prepare in time for the degree examinations of the Royal University and others. Just now we are specially grat- ified by our success in obtaining the municipal suffrage for women in Belfast, during the late session of Parliament. Our North of Ireland Women’s Suffrage Committee, would very gladly have promoted a bill giving the right to women in all Irish towns, but there was no means of doing so. All that was in our power was to get a women’s clause introduced in a local Belfast bill. There is no doubt, however, that our possession of this franchise, will stimulate women in other towns to care more strongly. The first elections under the new act took place on the 25th of November, and women voted in large numbers, making temperance a very promi- ment object in their choice of candidates. I take for granted that you are receiving similar information in regard to Dublin from Mrs. Haslam, the indefatigable honorable secretary of the Women’s Suffrage Committee there. If my health permitted I would willingly give you a more detailed account of our work. I do think it has been rather remarkably successful. A well-known Scotch M. P., who is an opponent of women's suffrage, and many other things that I care for, said to me, after visiting through the eastern counties of Ulster, “You have been extraordinarily successful in inculcating suffrage doctrines! One meets edu- cated men and women everywhere who hold them; but this is the first time in my life that I have been ‘ heckled ' on the subject by farmers, and artisans, and day- laborers!” I trust you will have a very good meeting; and I am sure, if I were well enough to call our committee together, that they would authorize me to send you their good wishes as well as my own. Yours truly, ISABELLA. M. S. TOD. PARIS, March 15. DEAR Miss ANTHONy: Much interest is taken here in the reform circles, in your 446 - International Council of Women. great Council. Let me give you one example. M. Guyot, one of the leading repub- lican deputies, wrote me a few days ago asking for documents concerning your Council. I sent him what I had, and night before last he delivered a very interest- ing lecture on the woman question, in which the United States were highly praised. There is no great progress to be reported from this country in this matter of emancipation of women. Public opinion, however, is being educated by such lectures as these by M. Guyot, and nobody can tell what the result may be. When it is remembered that the French have a way of doing things “with a rush,” you can not say what may not happen. Universal male suffrage was decreed in a night, and, it may be, in a burst of enthusiasm, in the midst of some great social and political revolution like that of 1848, women, too, may be given their political and legal rights. Alexandre Dumas said some time ago that women would vote in France within ten years. He may be right. Very truly yours, THEODORE STANTON. LoNDON, March 18, 1888. MY DEAR MISS ANTHoNY: It is with a feeling of deep regret that I am obliged to say “no' to your most kind invitation to be present at the International Council of Women to be held at Washington the last days of this month. It will be a most interesting and ever-memorable gathering. I shall be with you in spirit although it is beyond my power to be with you in person. I think, politically, we are making great way in England. The Women's Liberal Associations are becoming a powerful organization in the country, and numbers more than 16,000 members at the present moment. In this district, for instance, we form the fifth ward to the Men’s Association, and we send seven members to the executive committee. Within the last few days this executive has, among others, appointed W. R. Bates (a niece of Sir Roland Hill's) and myself, as two of its representatives on the council of the Liberal and Radical Unions, and myself into its general committee. These are the first appointments of the kind that have been made. The L. and R. Union is the central organization of all the Liberal and Radical associations in London. Now two ladies, at all events, will have a voice in the business transactions of this body. Are we, in England, or you, in America, nearest the goal, I wonder With kindest regards, and hoping that I may have the pleasure of meeting you again at no distant date, believe me, Yours sincerely, JANE COBDEN. REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF ARRANGEMENTS. The Committee of Arrangements” for the International Council of Women was appointed by the Executive Committee of the National Woman Suffrage Association at its Nineteenth Annual Convention, held in Washington, Jan- uary, 1887. The Committee held its first meeting in Philadelphia early in February, at which the work was planned. June 1, the Calli was issued accompanied by an Appeal for funds. During July and August the greater part of the Official Invitations were sent out to the Associations selected as being of either national scope or national value. Invitations (official) were also extended to a number of women, who, as individuals, were considered representative of lines of work not yet organized. The complete list of associations invited includes, in addition to those accepting, the following: ASSOCIATION OF COLLEGIATE ALUMNAE. SOCIETY To ENCOURAGE STUDIES AT HOME. SOCIETY FOR COLLEGIATE INSTRUCTION OF WOMEN. WoMEN’s STATE FAIR Association (Indiana). BRITISH NATIONAL SOCIETY FOR WOMEN’s SUFFRAGE. SOMERSET CLUB (London). PRIMROSE LEAGUE (England). SocIETY FOR HIGHER EDUCATION (England). GERMAN WOMEN’s UNION (represented by letters, page 219). CANADIAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION. ORDER OF THE EASTERN STAR (Freemasons). DAUGHTERS OF REBEKAH (Odd Fellows). BAPTIST WOMEN’s MISSIONARY SOCIETIES (Home and Foreign). METHODIST WOMEN’s MISSIONARY SOCIETIES (Home and Foreign). CoNGREGATIONAL WOMEN’s MISSIONARY SOCIETIES (Home and Foreign). PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL WOMEN’s MISSIONARY SOCIETIES (Home and Foreign). SOCIETY FOR THE AMELIORATION OF THE CONDITION OF WOMEN AND THE CLAIM- ING OF THEIR RIGHTS (represented by letter, page 444). LEAGUE FOR THE PROTECTION OF WOMEN (France). INTERNATIONAL UNION OF THE FRIENDs of YoUNG GIRLs (France). WoRK IN THE PROTESTANT PRISONs (France). SocIETY of Associated ScHools (Copenhagen). PoliticAL CLUB (Copenhagen). WoMEN'S READING CLUBS (Denmark). STUDENTS’ Association (Denmark). Early in December the Committee met in Indianapolis and the general *See names of Committee appended to Call, page 11. #See pages 10, 11. :See list, pages 49, 50, and errata, page 8. 448 International Council of Women. programme of the proceedings was there outlined. The months intervening between this meeting and March 25, were devoted to correspondence with the delegates and official guests, in relation to their topics, time, and position upon the programme. Miss Anthony went to Washington in January, where she was joined in February by Miss Foster, the headquarters of the Council being the Riggs House. March Io, it was decided, after corre- spondence with Mrs. Clara B. Colby, to issue the Woman's 7% iſ une daily during the Council, and announcement of this was accordingly made. The Delegates were requested to meet with the Committee of Arrange- ments the afternoon of Saturday, March 24, in the Red Parlor of the Riggs House. At 3 P. M. they were called to order by Miss Anthony, chairman of the Committee of Arrangements. Of the forty-eight duly accredited Del- egates a majority were present. After the preliminary business, Mrs. Sewall, at the request of the Chairman, stated briefly her plan of forming, as a fitting result of the present Council, two permanent organizations, National and International, which should make possible, at regular intervals, rep- resentative meetings of the same character. Mrs. Sewall then moved : That a committee be appointed to consider the question of National and Inter- national Councils, and to report to the Delegates a basis of organization. In the discussion of the question, the following persons participated : Frances E. Willard, Mary A. Livermore, Julia Ward Howe, Ednah D. Cheney, Lucy Stone, Mary F. Eastman, Rev. Ada C. Bowles, Alice Scatcherd, Alex- andra Gripenberg, Hannah Whitall Smith, Lita Barney Sayles, Rev. An- toinette B. Blackwell, May Wright Sewall, and Rachel Foster. Mrs. Sew- all's motion was passed, and it was further decided that the committee should consist of fifteen person's appointed by the chair, and that it be pre- pared to report to a Delegate Meeting on Saturday afternoon, March 31.* The Committee on Organization was authorized to appoint a Committee of nine on Nominations, said committee to report only in case the Dele- gates' meeting should decide to organize the permanent councils. After some discussion, but no further official action, the meeting adjourned. The Committee on Organization met Tuesday, March 27, at 9 A. M. After discussion, a resolution in favor of the formation of a National and an International Council was passed. Miss Willard presented an outline of con- stitutions for the two councils which was referred to a sub-committee of three: Miss Willard, Miss Eastman, and Mrs. Sewall. A Committee on Nomina- tions was nominated from the floor : Chairman, Clara Barton ; M. Louise Thomas, Mary F. Eastman, May Wright Sewall, Leonora M. Barry, Clara Cleghorne Hoffman, Frances E. Willard, Ada C. Bowles, Rachel G. Foster. It was moved that Miss Willard, as chairman of the Committee on Organi- zation, request Miss Anthony to call a meeting of the Delegates, at the ad- journment of the public session that morning, that this committee might ask * See names of Committee, page 50. Report of the Committee of Arrangements. 449 the power to add the foreign Delegates to the Committee for the nomina- tion of officers for the International Council. Adjourned. The second Delegates' Meeting took place on the platform of Albaugh's Opera House at the close of the public session of Tuesday morning, March 27. A quorum having been secured, Miss Anthony called the meeting to order. Miss Willard presented the request of the Committee on Organiza- tion, which was unanimously approved ; after which the meeting adjourned.* Wednesday, March 28, the Committee on Organization met at 9 A. M., when a draft of preamble and constitutions was presented, discussed, and referred again to the Sub-committee on Constitution. Adjourned. At one o'clock of Wednesday the Committee on Nominations met in the private dining-room of the Riggs House. Officers were first nominated for the proposed International Council. This done, the foreign delegates with- drew, and the home delegates nominated the officers for a National Council of the United States. Adjourned. - Saturday, March 31, at 9 A. M., the Committee on Organization met and adopted the report of the Sub-committee on Constitution. Saturday, March 31, at 3 P. M., in the Red Parlor of the Riggs House, the third Delegates' Meeting convened. Miss Willard, chairman of the Committee on Basis of Organization, read the following report: Mindful of the high duties entrusted to its care, your Committee has earnestly addressed itself to the problem of a National and an International Council of Women—first, as to the practicability of forming two such great organizations, in which should be included the organized working forces of the world's womanhood, and, secondly, as to their object and method. As a result of our deliberations, we respectfully report: First. We [Mrs. Scatcherd dissenting as to the International] are strongly in favor of such a federation—National and International—believing that it will incalculably increase the world’s sum total of Womanly courage, efficiency, and esprêt de corps ; that it will widen our horizon, correct the tendency to an exaggerated impression of one’s own work as compared with that of others, and put the wisdom and experience of each at the service of all. Secondly. We suggest that the form of organization be the simplest possible, following the general plan of the present Council, and to this end we offer forms of constitution, adapted to a National and to an International Council of Women. Chairman, FRANCES E. WILLARD; VICTORIA RICHARDSON, ADA. C. Bow LEs, M. LOUISE THOMAS, CLARA BARTON, MARY F. EASTMAN, MAY WRIGHT SEWALL, MARTHA. R. FIELD, BESSIE STARR KEEFER, ALICE SCATCHERD, ISABELLE BOGE- LOT, LAURA ORMISTON CHANT, S. MAGELSSON GROTH, ALEXANDRA GRIPENBERG; Secretary, RACHEL G. FosTER. The constitutions which follow were read as a whole.i. It was then *The persons added were : Alice Scatcherd, Laura Ormiston Chant, and Mrs. Ashton Dilke, England; S. Magelsson Groth, Norway; Alexandra Gripenberg, Finland; Mrs. McDonell and Bessie Starr Keefer, Canada; Zadel Barnes Gustafson, England; Isabelle Bogelot, France. + During the discussion of the report of the Committee on Organization, Mrs. Alice Scatch- erd and Mrs. Ashton Dilke requested leave to withdraw, as they did not desire to assume any responsibility in the formation of the International Council. 450 International Council of Women. moved and carried to act upon the preamble and articles seriaſim, as also upon the recommendations. They were adopted as reported by the com- mittee, with the exception of the change of the word “biennial” to “tri- ennial,” in Articles IV., V., and VI., of the National Constitution, and of the word “quadrennial” to “quintennial,” in the corresponding articles of the Constitution of the International Council. CONSTITUTION OF THE WOMAN’S NATIONAL COUNCIL OF THE UNITED STATES, ORGANIZED AT WASHINGTON, D. C., MARCH 31, 1888. PREAMBLE. We, women of the United States, sincerely believing that the best good of our homes and nation will be advanced by our own greater unity of thought, sympathy and purpose, and that an organized movement of women will best conserve the highest good of the family and the State, do hereby band ourselves together in a confederation of workers committed to the overthrow of all forms of ignorance and injustice, and to the application of the Golden Rule to society, custom, and law. That we may more successfully prosecute the work, we adopt the following CONSTITUTION. ARTICLE I. Wame. This federation shall be called the Woman’s National Council of the United States. ARTICLE II. - General Policy. This Council is organized in the interest of no one propaganda, and has no power over its auxiliaries beyond that of suggestion and sympathy; therefore, no society voting to become auxiliary to this Council, shall thereby render itself liable to be interfered with in respect to its complete organic unity, independence, or methods of work, or be committed to any principle or method of any other society or to any utterance or act of the Council itself, beyond compliance with the terms of this Constitution. - ARTICLE III. Officers. The officers shall be a President, Vice-President at Large, Corresponding Secre- tary, Recording Secretary, and Treasurer. Each president of an auxiliary society shall be ex-officio vice-president of the National Council, and the President of the National Council shall be ev-officio Vice-President of the International Council. The five general officers, with the Vice-Presidents, shall constitute an Executive Committee, of which seven members shall make a quorum, to control and provide for the general interests of the Council. . ARTICLE IV. Anlæðliaries. Any society of women, the nature of whose work is satisfactory to the Executive Committee, either as to its undoubtedly national character or national value, may become auxiliary to this Council by its own vote and by the payment of a sum amounting to half a cent yearly per member, in addition to a payment of twenty-five dollars, into the treasury of the National Council not later than three months prior to its triennial meetings. Report of the Committee of Arrangements. 451 ARTICLE V. Meetings. The National Council shall hold triennial meetings. The Committee of Arrange- ments shall be composed of the Executive Committee and one delegate chosen by each auxiliary society as its representative. ARTICLE VI. This Constitution may be altered or amended by a majority vote of the Council at any triennial meeting, printed notice thereof having been sent to each member of the Executive Committee at least three months prior to such meeting. CONSTITUTION OF THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL OF WOMEN, ORGANIZED AT WASHINGTON, D. C., UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, MARCH 31, 1888. PREAMBLE. We, women of All Nations, sincerely believing that the best good of humanity will be advanced by greater unity of thought, sympathy, and purpose, and that an organized movement of women will best conserve the highest good of the family and the State, do hereby band ourselves together in a confederation of workers com- mitted to the overthrow of all forms of ignorance and injustice, and to the applica- tion of the Golden Rule to society, custom, and law. That we may more successfully prosecute the work, we adopt the following CONSTITUTION. ARTICLE I. Name. This federation shall be called the International Council of Women. ARTICLE II. General Policy. This International Council is organized in the interest of no one propaganda, and has no power over its auxiliaries beyond that of suggestion and sympathy; there- fore, no National Council voting to become auxiliary to the International, shall thereby render itself liable to be interfered with in respect to its complete organic unity, independence, or methods of work, or shall be committed to any principle or method of any other Council, or to any utterance or act of this International Council, beyond compliance with the terms of this Constitution. ARTICLE III. Officers. The officers shall be a President, Vice-President at Large, Corresponding Secre- tary, Recording Secretary, and Treasurer. Each President of a National Council shall be ex-officio Vice-President of the International Council. The five general officers, with the Vice-Presidents, shall constitute an Executive Committee, of which seven members shall make a quorum, to control and provide for the general interests of the International Council. ARTICLE IV. Antºlºaries. Any National Council may become auxiliary to the International Council by its 452 International Council of Women. own vote and by the payment of one hundred dollars every five years. This sum shall be paid into the treasury of the International Council not later than three months prior to its quintennial meetings. ARTICLE V. Meetings. The International Council shall hold quintennial meetings. The Committee of Arrangements shall be composed of the Executive Committee and one delegate from each National Council. - ARTICLE VI. This Constitution may be altered or amended by a majority vote of the Council at any quintennial meeting, printed notice thereof having been sent to each member of the Executive Committee at least three months prior to such meeting. RECOMMENDATIONS.* First. That the general officers of the National Council be instructed to issue an address at once, to the women of the United States setting forth the objects of this new organization. Second. That the general officers of each association secure, if possible, a letter of approval of the organization, signed by representative women of all countries, urging the co-operation of all women, irrespective of race or creed, to be used in Connection with the official address. Third. That the general officers of both National and International Councils be instructed to enact by-laws for their guidance, which shall be valid until the first regular meeting of each council shall be held: Provided, That no By-law shall be passed which is not in exact accord with the Constitution. Fourth. That a clause be inserted into either the Constitution or By-laws, pro- viding that no person shall occupy the office of President two consecutive terms. Unanimously adopted. After the adoption of these constitutions Miss Barton, as chairman of the Committee on Nominations, brought in her report. The vote was taken by ballot, separately, upon the officers of each Council. The result was the election of the tickets reported by the committee, as follows: OFFICERS OF THE NATIONAL CC UNCIL, President : FRANCEs E. WILLARD, Illinois. Evanston. Vice-President-at-Large : SUSAN B. ANTHONY, New York. Rochester. Corresponding Secretary : MAY WIRIGHT SEWALL, Indiana. 343 North Pennsylvania Street, Indianapolis. Recording Secretary: MARY F. EASTMAN, Massachusetts. Tewksbury. Treasurer : M. LOUISE THOMAS, New York. Thomas Avenue, Fordham. - * These recommendations refer to both organizations. Report of the Committee of Arrangements. 453 OFFICERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL. President : - MILLICENT GARRETT FAwcETT, England. 2 Gower Street, London. Vice-President-at-Large : CLARA BARTON, America. Washington, D. C. Corresponding Secretary : RACHEL G. FostER, America. 748 N. Nineteenth Street, Philadelphia. Recording Secretary: KIRSTINE FREDERIKSEN, Denmark. 4 Kastamiewej, Copenhagen. Treasurer : ISABELLE BOGELOT, France. 4 Rue Ferrault, Paris. A committee was appointed to prepare a letter to be given to the press as the expression of this Council, said committee to report to the next meet- ing. Adjourned. The fourth Delegates' Meeting (thirty present) convened at the Riggs House Monday afternoon, April 2, Miss Anthony presiding. Miss Willard, as chairman of the committee, presented the report on Official Letter of the Council. The report produced an animated discussion, in which almost every person present took part. It was finally decided, by a vote of 21 to 7, to appoint a new committee (Miss Willard, being about to leave the city, could not serve further) to draft a brief official statement of the points upon which the Council was one in sentiment. This committee consisted of Mrs. Sewall, Miss Eastman, and Miss Foster. It was agreed that when the meeting adjourned it should be to convene Tuesday, April 3, at 9 A. M., to receive their report. A resolution was passed authorizing the Secretary to forward a letter of appreciation to the various foreign associations which had sent delegates to the Council ; also a letter, accompanied by the report, to every female sover- eign (reigning or consort) in all the countries of the world, expressing pleas- ure in their delegates, or regret that none had been sent. The Secretary was also authorized to send cablegrams of greeting from the Council to Presi- dent and Madam Carnot, France ; Victoria, Empress of Germany; the Crown Princess of Denmark; Mrs. Priscilla Bright McClaren, Mrs. Jose- phine Butler, Mrs. Jacob Bright, and Mrs. Elmy, of England. A most cordial expression of thanks was passed by a rising vote to Mr. and Mrs. C. W. Spofford for their exceeding kindness and hospitality to all the members of the Council, and a committee—consisting of Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Elizabeth L. Saxon, and Miss Foster—was appointed to arrange a tes- 454 International Council of Women. timonial to be presented to Mrs. Spofford on behalf of the delegates.* A vote of thanks was passed to the Committee of Arrangements. Adjourned. The fifth and final Meeting of the Delegates was held at 9 A. M., Tuesday, April 3, Miss Anthony in the chair. The report of the committee was pre- sented by Mrs. Sewall. - OFFICIAL STATEMENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL. * The International Council of Women, in session in the city of Washington from March 25 to April 1, inclusive, in closing makes public announcement that fifty- threef different organizations of women have been represented on its platform by eighty speakers and forty-nine delegates from England, France, Norway, Denmark, Finland, India, Canada, and the United States. All of these organizations but four are of national scope, and these are of national value. The subjects of Education, Philanthropies, Temperance, Industries, Professions, Organization, Legal Condi- tions, Social Purity, Political Conditions, and Religion have been discussed. While no restriction has been placed upon the fullest expression of the most widely diverg- ent views upon these vital questions of the age, it is cause for rejoicing that the ses- sions, both executive and public, have been absolutely without friction. It is the unanimous voice of the Council; that all institutions of learning and of professional instruction, including schools of theology, law, and medicine, should, in the interests of humanity, be as freely opened to women as to men; that oppor- tunities for industrial training should be as generally and liberally provided for one sex as for the other, and the representatives of organized womanhood in this Coun- cil will steadily demand that in all avocations in which both men and women engage equal wages shall be paid for equal work; and, finally, that an enlightened society should demand, as the only adequate expression of the high civilization which it is its office to establish and maintain, an identical standard of personal purity and morality for men and women. This report was unanimously accepted and the Secretary directed to give it to the press and have it printed for circulation. Adjourned. A reference to Some of the details of the management may serve to give an idea of the magnitude of the work. By appointment of the chairman of the *The result of the Committee's consultation was the presentation to Mrs. Spofford of a gold monogram pin–I. C. W.-and a handsomely-framed photographic group of the members of the Council. Mrs. Spofford desires the Secretary to convey to the delegates her thanks for these pleasant souvenirs of that, to her, delightful occasion. tSee pages 49 and 50. This list should contain also, as 52, the New England Hospital for Women and Children—Delegate, Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney—and the fifty-third is the National Woman Suffrage Association. - # The magnitude of the work of the Council may be better appreciated by a mention of a few figures in this connection. There were printed and distributed by mail 10,000 Calls (four pages each); 10,000 Appeals (two pages each); sketches were prepared of the lives and work of a number of the delegates and circulated by means of a Press Committee of over ninety persons in various cities of many States. March 10, the first edition (5,000) of the sixteen- page programme was issued; this was followed by five other editions of 5,000 each and a final, seventh edition of 7,000 copies. Each edition required revision and the introduction of slight changes made necessary by changing conditions in the meeting. There were written in connection with the preparations about 4,000 letters. Including those concerning railroad rates, there were not less than 10,000 more circulars of various kinds printed and distributed. A low estimate of the number of pages thus issued (circulars, calls, programmes, etc.) gives 672,000. During the week of the Council and the Convention of the N.W. S. A. (April 3 and 4) the Woman's Tribune was published eight times (four days 16 pages; four days 12 pages), the daily edition averaging 12,500 copies. (Séé note continued on opposite page.) Report of the Committee of Arrangements. 455 Committee of Arrangements, Mrs. Helen M. Gougar was, in December, 1887, made chairman of the Committee on Railroads. That this work was well done, the many visitors to the Council from all parts of the country, who enjoyed the benefit of the reduction secured, can testify. The death of a near relative summoned Mrs. Gougar from Washington to her home in Indiana, a few days before the Council opened. Her work was left with Miss Lucy E. Anthony, who took entire and efficient charge of this depart- ment during the Council and the Convention of the National Woman Suf- frage Association which followed it. - The Committee on Hotels and Boarding Places, of which Mrs. Mary S. Lockwood was chairman, had a necessary and very thankless share of the Council work. Fully a month before the meetings opened, Mrs. Lock- wood's correspondence began to increase and inquiries concerning accom- modations poured in upon her. During the Council, and for several days preceding it, some member of this committee was on duty during the entire day in Parlor 41, Riggs House. The almost Herculean task which Mrs. Colby undertook, single-handed, in editing the daily Woman's Zºribune, can be appreciated by no one outside of the few who were attending constantly to the Council machinery. For- tunately the editor found an able helper in Mrs. Elvira Bushnell, of Cleve- land, who, though she had come to attend the Council, relinquished the pleasure for the work and devoted all her days to aiding Mrs. Colby in her undertaking. - In securing Miss Mary F. Seymour, of New York, to take charge of the sten- ographic report, the Committee of Arrangements builded better than they knew. Her work should forever silence those who deny to women the pos- session of executive ability. With the cool head and practical hand of a veteran, she organized and trained in a few days a new corps of assistants, reduced the details of her work to a perfect system, and in fact managed the stupendous enterprise of furnishing daily veróaſim reports of the addresses, not only to the Woman's 77%une, but to many representatives of the press, with a success, if not unparalleled, at least unexcelled. It was Miss Seymour's original intention to take stenographic notes herself, assisted by Miss E. The receipts from contributions and memberships were in round numbers $5,000; from sale of seats and boxes at opera-house $5,000, and from sale of daily Woman's Tribune, photo- graphs and badges, collection, advertisements, etc., $1,500, making a total of nearly $12,000. The largest sums were from Julia T. Foster, $400; Elizabeth Thompson, $250; Mrs. Teland Stanford, $200; Rachel G. Foster, $200; and $100 each from Adeline Thomson, Ellen Clark Sargent, Emma J. Bartol, Margaret Caine, Sarah Knox Goodrich, Mary Hamilton Williams, Lucy W. Curtis, Mary Gray Dow, Jane S. Richards, George W. Childs, and Henry C. Parsons. The cost of the Tribune (printing, stenographic report, mailing, etc.) was over $3,600; hall rent, $1,800. When one considers the entertainment of so many officers, speakers and dele- gates, printing, postage, the salary of one clerk for a year (whose board was a contribution from Miss Adeline Thomson and Miss Julia Foster, of Philadelphia), and the thousand etcasteras of such a meeting, the total cost of $10,000 is not surprising. An international convention of men, held in Washington Within a year, cost in round numbers $50,000 ! 456 International Council of Women. Parsons, another expert reporter; but soon after her arrival it was found that the management alone required her entire attention ; she therefore tel- egraphed for Mrs. E. F. Pettingill to take her place at the reporters’ table. Of the skillful work done by these ladies, Miss Seymour speaks in the highest terms.” The decorations of the auditorium at Albaugh's Opera House were under the Superintendence of Mrs. Jane H. Spofford, who spared neither time nor pains to have them tasteful and appropriate. To Mrs. Spofford, as an officer of the National Woman Suffrage Association and a member of the Committee of Arrangements, was due a large share of the success of the Council. coyſ)HTTEES OF THE gotſNetII. \ COMMITTEE OF ARRANGEMENTS (Badge, Black and Gold.) General Officers of the National Woman Suffrage Association. ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, RACHEL G. FOSTER, President. Cor. Sec. SUSAN B. ANTHONY, JANE H. SPOFFORD, - MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, Treasurer. Vice-Presidents at Large. ELLEN H. SHELDON, MAY WHIGHT SEWALL Rec. Sec. - Chairman. Eac. CO777. RAILROADS (Badge, Purple). HELEN. M. GOUGAR, Chairman. LUCY E. ANTHON.Y. HOTELS AND BOARD IN G PLACES (Badge, Mahogany). ENRO LLMENT OF VISITORS (Badge, Light Blue). Chairman, ºy. *YºoHNs. JUILIA T. FOSTER. . DECORATION (Badge, Lavender). Chairman, MARY NASON. JANE H. SPOFFORD. E A DC ES (Badge, Pink). - Chairman, RACHEL G. FOSTER. LUCY E. ANTHON.Y. * PRESS (Badge, Red and Gold). - - HANNAH. B. SPEBRY. - PUBLIC RECEPTION (Badge, Dark Blue). - E. H. SPOFFORD. MAY WEIGHT SEWALL. Chairman, ºft MATILDA JOSLYN G.A.G.E. CAROLINE GILE EY ROGERS. *Eleven years ago Miss Seymour, with no knowledge of general business, began her career as stenographer. Since that time she has built up the largest stenographic and type-writing business in the United States, if not in the world. Occupying a representative position her- self among the skillful short-hand reporters of the country, she has also established a train- ing school for stenographers and type-writers, which is a model of its kind. Miss Seymour has this Pamphlet Report of the Council on sale at her office, 38 Park Row, Potter Building. New York city. - #See page 30. Report of the Committee of Arrangements. 457 MUSIC (Badge, Yellow and Brown). ELHZABETH BOYNTON HARBERT. BACHEL G. FOSTER. MAH. Y SEYMOUR HOWELL. REPORT OF COUNCIL (Badge, Grey and Gold). Chairman, CLARA. B. COLBY. ANNA. I. T)IGGS LAURA. M. JOHNS. ELIZABETH i. S. Axon. SAHAH M. S. MITH. HANNAH. B. SPEERRY. JULIA AMES. MARY DYE. ELIZABETH BOYNTON HARBERT. MARY F. SEYMOUR, Chief of Staff of Official Reporters and Stenographers I. C. W. BHOGES. Black and Gold, Committee of Arrangements; Purple, Railroads; Lavender, Décorations; Light Blue, Enrollment of Visitors; Dark Blue, Public Reception; Brown and Gold, Music, Ma- hogany and Yellow, Hotels and Boarding Places; Pink, Badges, Red and Gold, Press ; Gray and Gold, Report of Council; White, Delegates to the Council, Green, Official Guests; Yellow, Officer of the W. W. S. A.; Red, White, and Blue, Treasurer N. W. S. A.; Olive Green, Fraternal Dele- gates; Red, Reporters. The story of the Council would be incomplete without some reference to the social events of this significant week. The public reception at the Riggs House” was followed on Sunday evening by an informal gathering in the Red Parlor, announced as a Service of Song. Between the singing of the hymns a number of the ladies gave their reasons for the “faith that was within them ’’ upon the Woman Suffrage question. This was pronounced by all present an inspiring occasion. It would not be possible to give here in detail the receptions and meetings of the week. Every hour not occupied by the sessions of the Council, was filled with social engagements. Mrs. Louisa Southworth, of Cleveland, received the ladies from Ohio each after- noon. Mrs. Amanda C. Tiffany, of New York city, invited the ladies of her State to meet in her private parlor at the Riggs House. Mrs. Shattuck held a reception in the Red Parlor for the ladies from Massachusetts, and this example was followed by the daughters of Cassius M. Clay for Kentucky, and by the visitors from several other States. The lawyers held meetings, resulting in the formation of a Woman's International Bar Association. The physicians met at Mrs. Bovee's. The President of the Western Collegiate Alumnae, Mrs. Stowell, called together the women especially interested in educational subjects. Enthusiastic mem- bers of the Ramabai Circles Secured a short talk one Sunday afternoon, from the beloved inspirer of this noble work for the women of India. Friday, March 30, at 3 P. M., the President and Mrs. Cleveland received the Council and its visitors. All wore the yellow ribbon—the woman suf- frage badge—on this occasion, and over fifteen hundred persons called at the Executive Mansion. Not to be outdone in hospitality, the daughters, grand- daughters, nieces, and grandnieces of the Pioneers made a social occasion of the hours immediately following the Pioneers’ session of March 31, and the *See page 23. 30 458 - International Council of Women. same afternoon Mrs. Harriet H. Robinson received the factory-girls of Low- ell, their daughters and friends, and the former contributors to the Zowe/ Offering. On Monday evening, April 2, Senator and Mrs. T. W. Palmer, of Michi- gan, gave a handsome reception to the Foreign Delegates. Eight hundred invitations were sent out to the members of the Foreign Legations, prominent Government officials, and to the delegates and visitors to the Council, and more than a thousand persons availed themselves of the occasion to make the acquaintance of the distinguished foreign guests. Tuesday afternoon, April 3, Senator and Mrs. Leland Stanford, of Cali- fornia, opened their elegant home to a reception in honor of the Pioneers in the Woman Suffrage movement. In response to the many cards of invitation issued, hundreds of people gladly embraced this delightful oppor- tunity to salute these brave women who have, at such cost to themselves, broadened and enriched the lives of the women of to-day. The mallet which was used during the Council was presented to Miss Anthony by a Southern lady with the following letter: - NEW ORLEANs, L.A., March 19, 1888. DEAR MISS ANTHONY: Please accept the accompanying mallet, manufactured from the magnolia of Louisiana swamps, as a token of good will and fellowship from your Southern sister; and, if not better supplied, do her the honor of using it at the International Council of Women, over which you are to preside. Trusting that the results of the International Council may not only strengthen our suffrage cause, but equal the most sanguine expectations of all of its friends, I herein send my sincerest and heartiest “ God-speed” to the good work. Yours fraternally, ELIZA. C. FERGUSON. In addition to letters already mentioned, greetings and regrets have been received from Mrs. Minna Canth and Mrs. Betty Loefgren, Helsingfors, Finland ; Mrs. Alfhild Agrell, Mrs. Anna Charlotte Edgren-Leffler, and Prof. Sonja Kowalewski, Stockholm ; Miss Alma Akermark, Goteborg, Sweden ; Mrs. Ragna Neilson and Miss Anna Rogstad, Christiania, Nor- way ; Mrs. Antonie Loeken and Miss Olany Loeken, Throndjem, Norway; Signora Fanny Zampini Salazaro, Rome ; Dr. Henriette Tiburtius, Berlin; Miss Kirstine Frederiksen and Miss Johanna Krebs, Copenhagen ; Isa- bella O. Ford, Leeds, England ; Mrs. Mentia Taylor, Lady F. W. Harber- ton, and Mrs. Millicent Garrett Fawcett, London ; Miss Eliza Kirkland, Edinburgh ; Dr. Ewing Whipple, Liverpool; Dr. Laura Ross Wolcott, Wisconsin ; Dr. Agnes Kemp, Pennsylvania (absent in Europe); Augusta Cooper Bristol, New Jersey (absent in California); Dr. Seth and Hannah Rogers, Connecticut; Dr. Alida C. Avery, California; Mrs. Harriet S. Brooks, Nebraska ; Mrs. Sarah Burger Stearns, Minnesota ; Mrs. Helen M. Gougar, Indiana ; Mrs. Caroline B. Buell, Illinois. I APPENDIX. The Christian Woman’s Board of Missions* accepted the invi- tation too late to be given the place upon the programme which the committee would gladly have accorded its Report. CHRISTIAN woMAN’s BOARD OF MISSIONS. Mrs. CoRDIE B. KNowLEs, Delegate. Emerson says: “America is another name for opportunity. Our whole history appears like a last effort of the Divine Providence in behalf of the human race.” In the opening page of “Our Country” Josiah Strong" writes these words: “There are certain great focal points of history toward which the lines of past progress have converged, and from which have radiated the moulding influences of the future.” Such will this International Council be. - I come to you as a delegate from the Christian Woman's Board of Mis- sions, an incorporated body which raises, controls, and disburses its funds entirely separate from the societies officered by our brethren, yet in sympa- thy with their efforts. So well have our ladies managed their finances that the cost of disbursing its funds, though amounting to many thousands of dollars annually, has been but one-third of one per cent. Such women as Eliza Ballou Garfield and Zeralda G. Wallace have given us the influence of their lives. Our board was organized in 1874. Its headquarters are at Indianapolis. Its auxiliaries and work extend into every State and Terri- tory of the Union, to Jamaica, India, and Japan, as it comprises both home and foreign work. Our local Societies enroll nearly 20,000 women, and in many States we have organizers who labor to rouse the women to show their faith by their works, by systematic giving for the spread of the Gospel. Our children, through their work in Mission Bands, are our builders. They assisted in building the Josephine Smith Memorial Chapel in Japan, raised the necessary sum to build a bungalow at Bilaspur, India, and this year are erecting a church at Missoula, Montana. Miss Mary Greybiel, of Buffalo, N. Y., a young lady of education and culture, was among the young women who went to India in 1882 as our Zenana workers. I picked up a Southern paper to-night, and my eye caught these words: “A nervy woman; ” So I read and found this account of her work in building the bungalow at Bilaspur. For an English engineer in- specting it said, “No man could have done better.” It appears that she had to serve as architect, master builder, and general boss mechanic. First she bought four yoke of buffaloes to do the teaming ; then a few big trees—they *See page 49. 460 International Council of Women. are very scarce in that part of the country. She employed a hundred natives, or nearly that number, whom she taught to quarry stone, which had to be hauled several miles; and to make brick, first tramping the clay, fashioning it into the bricks and then burning them, using the spare portion of the trees for fuel. The trunks of the trees were laboriously, by hand, sawed into boards for the floors, roofs, etc. A stone foundation three feet thick was laid three feet below ground and as much above, this solid base wall being deemed necessary to keep out white ants, which are a great pest of the coun- try. Evidently a good job was made of the wall. The Missionary Zidings is edited and published monthly at Indianapolis by Mrs. S. E. Shortridge, in the interest of our work. We aim to spread the pure Gospel of the Son of God, to hasten the time when all shall know him, from the least to the greatest, rather than to the building up of denomi- national strongholds; so shall “the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of the Lord and of his Christ.” Said Dr. Beecher, “In matters which reach Eternity, now is always the nick of time.” Shall we not go to our homes determined to put into action now the earnest upliftings of thought we have heard during this Council P INDEX. A. Abolitionist Society, 259. Adams, John, 337; John Quincy, 336; George Francis, 4 - Advancement of Women, Society for, 49, 189, 193, 195, 218. * – Africa, 234, 235, 429.-North, 260. Jº Agrell, Mrs. Alfhild, 458. Akermark, Miss Alma, 458, Alabama, 131. Albanese, Professor, 213. Albaugh's Opera House, 10, 24, 30. Alexandria, 262. Allen, Ellen, 43. Allgemeine Deutsche Frauen Verein, Letter from the, 219. Alpha, The, 273. Alumnae, Association of Collegiate, 56, 57,447. —Western ºlºgºte. 12, 49, 72.-Of Michi- gan University, 80. America, 9, 112, 113, 133, 146, 164, 166, 173, 182, 192, 208, 237, 241, 246, 255, 256, 261, 262, 289, 305, 349, 388, 394,399, 426, 429, 433,438, 442,443.-South, 262. American Žanſ Review, 178. American Amendment (see Red Cross), 104, 105,106. , American Woman Suffrage Association, 12, 14, 15, 49, 241. Amélioration of the Condition of Women, So- ciety for, 444.—Letter of, 447. Amendments to Federal Constitution—Twelfth, 349; Thirteenth, 298,349; Fourteenth, 349; ºfteenth §§§5,306; Proposed fifteenth, 8. Ames, Julia, 457. Anarchists, 164, 436. Anderson, 'Dr. Garrett, 383. Andersonville, 133. Anneke, Madame, 368. Anthony, Lucy E., 455, 456. Anthony, Mary S., 17,456. Anthony, Susan B., Mention of, 9, 10, 11, 15, 17, 18, 31, 32, 47, 107, 111, 162, 256, 286, 297, 298, 299, 300, 301, 302, 324, 325, 335, 348, 353, 354, 381, 398, 448,453, 456, 458. Antifies, ſhe, 362. - Anti-Slavery, 194.—American Society, 338.- Boston Fémale Society, 361.--World's Con- vention, 29, 345. (See Conventions.) Antwerp, 266. Aristotle, 401. Archibald, Jane B., 17. Argentine Republic, 179. Arrangements, Committee of, 10; Report of, 447–458 - Arnold, Matthew, 437. Arrest of Women on the Street, 236. Ashley, Rev., 347. - Aspasia, 180. Associated Schools, Society of (Denmark), 447. Astroem, Miss Emma, 390. Auclert, Hubertine, 9, 90 ; Letter of, 41. Austin, Dr. Harriet N., 17. Austria, 153, 259,429.-Austro-Hungary, 179. Australia, 183, 429. Auxerre, Council of, 405. Avery, Dr. Alida C., 458. B. Backlund, Mrs., 390. Badges for Council, 457. Bahia, 262. Bailey, Dr., 354. Baltimore, 255. Bancroft, Prof. Jane H., 166. Banking Accounts of Women in England, 232. Baptist Women's Missionary Societies, 447. (See Freewill.) Barner, Miss, 200. Barker, Mrs. E. Florence, 13, 49.-Address of, 101–103. Barolong, Tribe, 234, 235. Bar Association, Woman’s International, 177, 179,457. Barney, Mrs. Susan Hammond, 12, 13, 15, 49, 226; Address on Police Matrons, 120-123. Bjows Mrs. Isabel C., 13, 49 ; Address, 83– Barry, Mrs. Ileonora M., 14, 50, 145, 162, 163, 448 ; Address, 153–156 (See K. of L.) Barrau, Caroline de, 41, 90. Bartol, Emma J., 455. Barton, Clara, 13, 48, 49, 50, 133, 184, 351, 352,448 ; Address on Red Cross, 103-107. Basil, 404. Bastile, The, 145, Bates, Miss V. R., 446 Baccini, Ida, 210. Baccari, Madame G. A., 214. Balzani, Countess, 209. Pº Mr. Frederik, 203, 204; Mrs. Mathilde, Bear, Annette, 291. Becker, Miss, 9. - Beecher, Catharine, 337. Belgium, 151, 254, 257. Belfast, 9, 444, 445. Benneson, Cora A., 12: Address, College Fel- lowships for Women, 77–80. Benjamin, Hon. R. M., 175. Bennett, Dr. Alice, 172. Bergen, 203. - Berlin, 220. Berners, Mr., 9. Bertani, 213. Bethel, Mr. Christopher, 234. Biggs, Caroline A., 9, 41 Bilaspur, 459 Bird, Clementine, 168. Birney, Mrs. 361, 362. Bittenbender, Mrs. Ada M., 14, 177; Address, Woman in Law, 173-179. Bjn-Arm, Louise, 42. Bjoernson, Bjoernstjerne, 205, 280, 281, 393. Blackwell, Rev. Antoinette Brown, 11, 12, 17, 18, 24, 29, 30, 32, 181, 325, 338, 360, 407, 422; Reminiscences, 340-342; Science and Religious Truth, 407-415. Blackwell, Henry B., 17, 343; Reminiscences, 335-339. Blackwell, Dr. Elizabeth, 95, 338, 352. Blackwell, Dr Emily, 95. Black List. 154, 156. Blagden, Rev., 333. Blair, Senator Henry P., 112, 134; Educational Bill, 128. 462 International Council of Women. Blake, Mrs. Lillie Devereux, 15, 236; Address, Legal Disabilities, 226–229. Blatch, Mrs. Harriot Stanton, 9, 43. Bloomer, Amelia, 356; Letter of, 360. Bluestocking Club, 215. Bocock, Mrs. E. J., 183. Bodichon, Barbara, 178. Bogstad, Anna, 43. Bogelot, Madame Isabelle, 13, 18, 44, 49, 50, 89, 449; Address on Prison Work, 90–94; Farewell, 425. - - Bohemia, 262. Bologna, 178. Bombay, 262, 266. Bonghi, 213. Booth, Hon. Henry, 174. Born, Helena, 42. Boston, 119, 135, 168, 183, 267, 310, 337. Bovee, Mrs., 457. Bowles, Rev. Ada C., 10, 24, 49, 50, 448, 449; Address, Women in the Ministry, 180–181. Bowring. 20. Boycott, 156. Boyeson, Mr., 207. Boyle, Mrs. H., 183. Boyve, M. de, 152. - - Bradford, Mrs. Cornelia, 168; Attorney-Gen- eral (Kansas), 317. Bradwell, Myra, 175, 176. Brain weights compared. (See Brain, Sex in ) Brain, Sex in, by Helen Gardener, 369–382. Brandes, Dr., 393. Brazil, 179. Bremer, Fredrika, 389. Brent, Margaret, 173. “ Bridge of Sighs,” 270. Briggs, Mrs. (See Olivia.) Bright. John, 41, 115; Jacob, 9, 384; Mrs. Jacob (Ursula), 9, 41,233, 286, 453. - Bristol, Mrs. Augusta Cooper, 141, 458. British National Society for Women's Suf- frage, 447. Brooks, Mrs. Harriet S., 458. Brown, Rev. Antoinette. (See Blackwell.) Brown, Martha McLellan, 12, 16, 246; Address, Institutive Power, 80–82; Dr. Charlotte B., 43. Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 33, 113. Bruce, Rosalie, 42. Buell, Mrs. Caroline B., 458. Buenos Ayres, 262. Bulletán, Cöntinental, 255. Bunsen, Baron de; 259. Bunting, Percy William, 290. Bureau of Statistics, National, 135. Burke, Edmund, 145. Burlingame, Letitia L., 176. Burleigh, Charles C.; 36. Burnett, Dr. Mary Weeks, 13,49; Address, The Temperance Hospital, 123–125. Burtis, Sarah Anthony, 17, 327. Bushnell, Mrs. Elvira, 455. Butler, Mrs. Josephine, 40, 234, 252, 253, 286, 422,453; Letter of, 257-264. Byers, Mrs. 445. Byron, 378; Brain of, 380. C. Calcutta, 262. - California, 174, 175, 262; Greeting from, 43. º The, of the International Council, 10–11, 47 Calvin, 404. Campbell Mrs. Helen, 14; Paper, Women in the Trades, 146–151. Canada, 30, 46, 116, 124, 384. Canadian Woman Suffrage Association, 447. Canth, Mrs. Minna, 390, 391,458. Carlile, Mrs., 445. - Carlisle, Bishop, 406. Carlyle, Thomas, 136. Cº. President and Madame (of France), Carolina. (See North C, and South C.) Carpenter, Mary, 258. - Carse, Mrs. Matilda B., 13, 14: Temperance ºple, 125-127; Woman and Finance, 186– Carthage, 268. Cary, Alice, 367; Samuel, 338. Casse, Mrs. 203. Censor, The, 168. Century, The 432. Chace, Elizabeth Buffum, 338, 356; Sketch of Abby Kelley, 364–366. Chadwick, John W., 19, 357. Chadz, Mrs. Augusta, 183. Chandler, Mrs. Lucinda B., Paper on Marriage Reform, 284–285. Channing, William Henry, 36. Chant, Mrs. Laura Armiston, 16, 17, 40, 44, 45. 49, 50, 288, 344, 369, 449; Address on Social Purity, 264-271. Chapman, Maria Weston, 338, 362. Charitable Associations, 10. Cheney, Mrs. Edna D., 13, 17. 448, 454; Re- port, New England Hospital for Women and Children, 95-98; Address in Religious Sym- posium, 420–421. Chicago, 119, 125, 155, 174, 255. Child, Lydia Maria, 36, 337, 338, 362. Children, In, the Mines, 247; In Factories, '56; Mothers' Right to, in America, 227 : In En- gland, 233; How to Reach the, by Anna Gor- don, 118–119. Childs, George W., 455. Christian Woman's Board of Missions, Report, 459–460. Christiani, Mrs. 203. Christiania, 203, 279. Church, 10; Early Christian, Woman in the, 400–407. Cincinnati, 255. Clark, Mrs. Helen Bright, 9, 41, 42; Lucretia. Kendall, 289; Emily, 360. Clay, Cassius M., 457. Cleveland, 339. Cleveland, President, 225, 257; Mrs. Frances F., 225, 245, 257. Close of the Council, 18, 425–438. Closing Address. (S. e Mrs. Stanton.) Clubs, Women's, 217–218: New England, 225; New Century (Philadelphia), 218. Cobbe, Frances Power, 137. Cobden, Miss Jane, letter of, 446. Co-Education, 12, 53, 57, 59, 209; Dean Mich- aels on, 75–77. Colby, Mrs. Clara B., 188, 350, 357, 448, 455, 457; Maria, 42. Cold, Mr., 207. - Cole, Catharine. (See Field, Martha R.) Collalto, Count Massimo, 213, 214. Colleges, Adelbert, 76, 77; Bryn Mawr, 12, 59, 79; Columbia, 218; Harvard (see Universi- ties); Harvard Annex, 59; Hastings College of Law, 175 ; Newnham, 80; Oberlin, 59, 241, 331, 333, 338, 340; Princeton, 74; Smith, 59: Union College of Law, 174, 175, 176; Vassar, 59; Wellesley, 59, 60; Wes- leyan Female, 12, 80; Woman's (of North- western University), 12. (See Medicals) º; Instruction of Women, Society for €, - College ..º. for Women, by Miss Cora Benneson, 12, 77–80. Collett, Camilla, 278. Collins, Emily P., 17, 352. Colman, Lucy N., 356; Letter of 359. Indeº. 463 Colonies, English, 260; French, 260. Colombi, Marchesi, 210. Colorado, 157. Columbia, District of, 123, 174. Committee of Arrangements, Report of, 447, cºons. House of, 230, 237, 258, 384, 385, Commonwealth, Topeka, 364. Common Law, The, 227, 229, 242. Commune, The French, 436. Communists, 164,436. Conference of the Pioneers, 17, 322–368. Congress, 134, 296. Congregational Ministers, Association of, 333. Congregational Women's Missionary Societies, 7. Cºeticut, 131, 134, 174; Constitution of, - Consolidation of Workshops Act, Effect of, on Women, 230. Constantinople, Synod of, 404. Constitution, American, 348, 382, 386, 432, 435 (see Amendments); of England, 382; Sub-committee on, 449. Constitutional Rights of Women in the United - §§es. by Isabella Beecher Hooker, 16, 292– cºlous Diseases Acts, 234, 252; Repeal of, Contributor, The, 108. Conventions. (See Woman Suffrage, Temper- ance, etc.) Cook, Mrs. Helen M., 313, 314. Cooper, Peter, 314: Mrs. Sarah B., 12; Paper on Kindergarten Work, 67–72. Co-operation, 153, 155; Statistics of, 152; Ad- dress of Mrs. Lita Barney Sayles, 152–153. Co-operative News of America, The, 152. Co-operators, Annual Congress of, 152. Coppino, 213. Copenhagen, 201, 205, 206, 207. Corinne, 165 Cornelia, 181. Cost of Council, 10, 454, 455; of Temperance Temple, 125. Couzins, Miss Phoebe W., 174, 175, 256. Courtney, Leonard, 384. Courant, The Hartford, 168. Court of Claims, 175. Council of Women, The International, 9, 62 o 94, 130, 152, 171, 179, 194, 195, 214, 223, 231. - 256, 257, 262, 274, 330, 331, 345, 356, 357, 358, 359, 360, 364, 366, 400, 402,424, 425, 426, 428, 429, 431, 432, 433,438, 441, 442. 443, 444, 446, 447, 448, 449, 457, 458, 460 ; Call for, 9–10, 447 ; Appeal, 447; Details of Preparation, 454; Committees of, 456. Councils, Permanent, National and Interna- tional, 425, 449; Constitutions of, 450–452; ºrs of, 452, 453 ; Recommendations, Cox, Mrs. A. L., 361. -- Crandall, Prudence, 337, 356. Club, The Bluest.)cking, 215. Crispi, Signor, 213. Croly. Mrs. Jennie C, 15, 50, 224, 354; Ad- dress on Clubs, 217–218. Crook, Mr. and Mrs., 9. Cromwell, Brain of, 378, 380, 381. Crouch, Mary, 168. Crown Princess of Denmark. Crudelli, Tommaso, 213. Crusade, A New, by Elizabeth Boynton Har- bert, 246–248. Cuba, 262, Curtis, Lucy W., 455. Custody of Infants Act, 234. Cuvier, Brain of, 376, 378, 380, 381. t (See Louise.) I). Dakota, 157. Dall, Caroline H., 17, 18, 415. Danish Women's Association, 15, 50, 203–206. Danish Women's Society for the Protection of Young Girls, 15, 50; Report of, 200–203. Dante, 378. - Darlington, 229. David, Louise, 444. Pºs, Paulina Wright, 36, 360; Edward M., 6. Deborah, 404. De Foresta, 213. Delaware, 131, 256. Delegates of the Council, Meetings–First, 448; iºnº, 449 : Third, 449; Fourth, 453; Fifth, Democratic Party, 307, 309: Democrats, 319. Denmark, 30, 32, 179, 200, 207, 259, 393, 394 ; Woman's Rights in, 393-394; Women's Edu- cation, 206–207; Woman's Association, 203– 206; Women's Union for Protection of Young Girls, 200–203. Dennison, 338. I)epretis, 213. Deraismes, Maria, 90,444. De Sanctis, 213. De Stael, Madame, 33. Deutsch-Amerikaner, Dér, 188. Deyo, Rev. Amanda, 11, 16. - Diaz, Mrs. Abby Morton, 15, 50, 223; Report on Industrial and Educational Unions, 198– 200. Dickens, Charles, 161. Pºison, Anna, 133, 134, 256, 339; Mrs., Diehl, Mrs. Anna Randall, 313. Diggs, Mrs. Anna L., 457. Dilke, Mrs. Ashton (Margaret), 17, 40, 44, 45, 46, 50, 236, 237, 449 : Address, Woman Suf- frage in England, 382–388. Diotime, 165, 181. Disabilities of Women, Legal, 15 ; Address by Mrs. L. D. Blake, 227–229. - Divorce, In America, 227; England, 235; In- dians, 239. Douglass, Frederick, 47, 323, 324, 352; Remi- miscences of, 327–331. Dover, 264. Dow, Neal, 342; Mrs. Mary E. Gray, 159,455. Dows, Baron, 232. Draper, Mrs. Margaret, 168. Drummond, James, 21, Dublin, 9; Greeting from, 42–43. Dumas, Alexandre, 446. Duniway, Mrs. Abigail Scott, Letter of, 442. Dunn, Julia Mills, 19, Dye, Mary, 457. - Dyer, Alfred S., 255, 260. E Eastern Star, Order of, 447. Eastman, Mary F., 15, 49, 50, 222, 448, 449; Address on Organization, 195–198. Edinburgh, 9; Branch of the Federation for the Repeal of State Regulation of Vice, 49. Edson, Dr. Susan A., 17, 256, 352. Edmundson, Mary, 42. Education—College Fellowships for Women, 12, 77–80; Higher Education for Women in the United States, 12, 51-63; Retrospection, 12, 72–75; Scholarships, 77; State Appropria- º: Statistics, 52, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 74, / Education of Women in Denmark, 206–207; - England, 171; Finland, 389–391; France. 171; India, 63-67; Italy, 208, 209, 210, 211; ſºa, 439; Switzerland, 171; United States, 464 International Council of Women. Education-President James B. Angell, 73; William Ellery Channing, 73; Mark Hopkins, 73; Mrs. Seager, 7.3; Henry W. Sage, 73; Matthew Vassar, 59,73. Education—“Female,” 51, 52; Moral Reform, 258; Objectors to Higher Education of Women, 53, 54; Deterioration in Schools, 167. (See Co-education, Colleges, Educational In- Stitutions, Kindergartens, Medical Colleges, Universities, etc.) - Educational institutions for Women—Brad- ford Academy, 53; Friends School at Wil- mington, 52.3. Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, 73; Maine Wesleyan Seminary and Female College, 53; Lane Seminary,356; Institutions in Boston, 52; Troy Female Seminary, 53; University. Examinations 53; Correspond- ence Societies, 53; The “ Female Seminary,” 52, 53; Normal Schools, 52, 57, 58. Egypt, 194, 260, 268, 367, 368. Ehrénrooth, Miss, 389, 391. Eliot, George, 33,68, i19; Dr. William G., 255. Elliot, President, 167. º Mrs. Elizabeth Wolston, 233, 234, 286, Enforcement Act of 1870, 301. England, 9, 30, 41, 42, 130, 152, 171, 180, 208, 232, 234, 236, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 262, 264, 265, 268, 382, 383, 385, 386, 387, 388, & 426,438, 443,444, 446 ‘England to Amerića,” Poem by L. Ormiston Chant, 271. Eric, 134. Ernst, Sarah Otis, 338. Estlin, Mary A., 42. Europe, 42,125, 208, 259, 262, 343. Eve, 180. Everett, Martha A., 16, 49; Address on School Suffrage in Massachusetts, 309–311. - Evreninova, Miss, 177, 178 Eaccélsior, 392. Eaºponent, The Woman’s, 108. F Factory Act of 1874 (England), 230. Fairchild, President, 341. Fales, Mrs. Imogene C., 152. Fambri, Paulo, 211. Family, Law in the, 15, 241. Farmers, Wives and Daughters, 139. Farmer's Friend, The 140. Farmers, Women as, by Mrs. Esther L. Warner, 14, 156–159. Favre, Jules, 259. Fºgºth Mrs. Millicent Garrett, 291, 383, 453, oč. Feddersen, Mrs. Astrid Stampe, 204, 206. Federation of Labor Unions, Čommunication from, 163–164. Ferguson, Eliza C., 458. Fibiger, Miss Mathilde, 393. Field, Mrs. Martha R., 14, 50, 449; Address of, 181–183; Dr. Edna R., 43. Finance, Women and. (See Carse, Matilda.) Finland, 30, 32, 205, 388, 389, 391, 392, 425, § 427; Women's Work in Finland, 388– Finnish Women's Union, 12, 15, 17, 49, 392. First Woman’s Rights Čonvention, 322, 323, 324. (See Stanton, E. Cady.) Fletcher, Miss Alice, 15 ; Address on Legal Conditions of Indian Wome), 237–241. Florence, 209. Folkstone, 267. Folliero de Luna, Aurelia, 214. Foltz, Clara S., 175. Ford, Isabella. O., 458. Formal Opening of the Council, 12, 30–50. Forney, Colonel John W., 139. Foster, Mrs. Judith Ellen, 13, 16, 110, 177 ; Address of, 304–306; Julia T., 455, 456; Stephen S., 365; Rachel G. , 9, 10, 11, 50, 225, 350, 351,448, 449, 453, 455, 456, 457. France, 9, 30, 32, 89, 90, 146, 178, 180, 234, 238, 259, 388,438, 443. Franco-German War, 105. Franchises in England, 386, 387. Franklin, Mrs. Christine Ladd, 79. Fraser, Lord, 231. Frazar, Mrs. Caroline M. S., 16, 50; Report of, Frederiksen, Mrs. Ada Monrad, 12, 15, 50,217; Paper on Education of Women in Denmark, 206–207. Frederiksen, Miss Kirstine, 458; Report of Danish Woman's Association, 203–206; Woman's Rights in Denmark, 393-394. Freewill Baptist Missionary Society (Woman's) 15, 49, 200. Fremont, Jessie Benton, 339; John C., 319. French Woman's Union for the Care of the Wounded. 49. Friederići, j.319. Friends of Young Girls, International Union of the, 447. Fua Fusinato, Erminia, 209. Fuller, Margaret, 129, 168; Sarah E., 102. Fund, Mutual Relief, 220. G. Gabba, 213. Gage, Frances D. (Aunt Fanny), 17, 36,339, 357, 360; Mrs. Matilda Joslyn, 11, 15, 17, 18, 48, 189, 241, 356, 456; Reminiscences, 347; Woman in the Early Christian Church, 400–407. Gains, Industrial, 131–153. Gallimore, Dr. Elizabeth, 43. Gambetta, 378. Gardner, Anna, 17, 22. - - Gardener, Helén, 17, 431; Sex in Brain, 369– 382. Garfield, Eliza Ballou, 459. Garibaldi, 259. Garrison, William Lloyd, 36,331, 337, 347. Grand Army of the Republic, Woman's Re- lief Corps of the, 13,49, 101–103. G. A. R., Ladies of the, 13, 49, 88. Gaspar n. Count and Countess Agenor de, 259. Gay, Elizabeth Neal, 322. Gazette, Wyandotte, 364. Gazett . The, 168 ; Virginia, 183. Georgia, 128, 131. George, Henry, 144, 308. Genoa, 211. * Gentleman's Day” at Sorosis, 215. German Women's Union, 219, 447. Germany, 32, 46, 146, 151, 153, 208,218, 259, 262, 388, 394, 438; The Woman Movement in, 219, 220. Gibbons, Abby Hopper, 255, 356. Gill, R. C., 135. Gingins, Madame des 261. Girl Pursued by Police, Incident of, 264, 265. Gladstone, William P., 37, 384. Gledstone, Bev. J. --- Gnostics, The, 402. Goddard, Mary K., 168, Godey's Ladies' Book, 354 Goldschmidt, Henriette, 219. - Gºgº". Mrs. Helen M., 175, 399, 456, 457, 5 Gordon, Anna, 13; Address, How to Reach the Children, 118-119 ; Laura de Force, 175. Grange, The, 137; Woman in the (by Mrs. Worden), 14, 137–142; Reading Circles Of, 140. Gray, Mary T., 356; Letter of, 363-364. P., 255. Indea. 465 - Great Britain, 32, 152, 153,255, 257, 394. Greece, 190, 191,268. Greenwood, Grace. (See Lippincott, Mrs. Sarah.) Greeley, Horace, 168, 356. Green, Mrs. Ann K., 168. Greetings and Letters, 12, 39–43. Gregory of Nyassa, 404. Grenfell, Alice, 42. Greybeil, Miss Mary, 459. Grew, Miss Mary, 17,322, 338, 347, 356, 361; Reminiscences of, 344-346. Griess-Trant, M., 444 Griffing, Josephine, 36. Gripenberg, Alexandra, 12, 15, 17, 44, 49, 50, 8; Woman's Work in Finland, 388–392. Grimaldi, 213. Grimke, Angelina, 132, 189, 331, 333, 337, 354, 360, 361, 362; Sarah, 331, 333,337, 354, 360, 361, 362. Groth, Sophia Magelsson, 16, 44, 49, 427, 449; §per on Women's Position in Norway, 278– Grove, Mr., 207. Grundtvig, Bishop (N. F. S.), 204, 205, 207; Miss Elizabeth, 205. Guardian, The, 168. Gustafson, Mrs. Zadel B., 17, 46, 50, 449; Ad- dress of, 394–398. Guyot, M., 446. H. Haddock, Emma, 175. Hagman, Miss, 391. Hale, Rev. Edward Everett, 196,221. Halkjer, Mrs. Julia, 200. Hall, Miss C. A., 138. Halton, 117. Hallowell, Mary H., 17, 327. Hamburg, 262. Hammond, Dr. Wm. A., 369, 374, 375, 378, 379, 380, 381. Hanaford, Rev. Phoebe A., 10, 24. Hanson, Mrs., 200; Miss Ida Falbe, 204. Harbert, Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton, 16, 18, 21, 23, 30, 457; God is Love, 415–418; A New Crusade, 246–248. Harberton, Lady F. W., 458, Harcourt, Sir William, 384. Harper, Mrs. Frances E. W., 13; The Neglected Rich, 119–120. Harrah, Hev. C. C., 23. Haslam, Mrs. Anna Maria, 9, 42, 445. Hawaiian Kingdom, 179. Heikel, Miss Hosina, 390. Heine, Heinrich, 146. Helena, Empress, 180. Helmer, Bessie Bradwell, 176. Helsingfors, 389, 392. Herrick, Elizabeth, 247. Herring, Mrs. C. Y., 141. Higginson, T. W., 335, 356; Tetter of, 367. Hºr Education of Women, Society for the, Homes, Woman's Industrial (Salt Lake City), 352; Servants', 201, 202, 203. “Home, Sweet Home,” 13,31,128. Hong-Kong, 262. - Hooker, Isabella Beecher, 15, 16, 18, 189, 400, 421; Religious Creed, 418–420; Constitu- §§§ghts of Women in the United States, Hopper, Isaac T., 356. Hospitals, National Temperance, 123–125; London Temperance, 124; Women Physi- cians in, 172: For the Insane, 172; Managed by Women, 95–98. (See Cheney, Ednah D.) Hostrup, Jens, 393: C., 205. Hosmer, Harriet, 136. Howe, Mrs. Julia Ward, 15, 18, 47, 48, 49, 223, 254, 420, 448; The Power of Organization, 189–195. Howell, Mary Seymour, 457. Hughes, Thomas, 153. Hugo, Victor, 30, 130, 259. Hungary, 180, 259. Huling, Caroline, 357. Humbert, Professor, 254, 259, 260. Humboldt, William von, 311. Hunt, Mrs. Mary H., 13, 425 ; Our Reasons, 127-128; Mrs. Jane, 322; Judge, 298, 299, 300, 301, 303. Hutchinson, John W., 17, 327, 334, 356, 357; Original Song, 326. Husbandry, Patrons of. (See Grange.) Huss, John, 404. Huxley, Professor, 173. Hyde Park Demonstration, 265. Hypatia, 165. I Ibsen, Henrik, 278, 279, 393. Idaho, 442. Independence, Declaration of, 39, 183, 294, 305, 323, 336, 346, 432. India, 30, 32, 44, 96, 126, 388, 459; Bombay, 64, 97; Calcutta, 64, 97; English Government in, 66; Education of Women, 63–67; Hyder- abad Sum, 97 ; Lahore, 97; Madras, 64, 67 ; Prostitution in, 260. Indian Association, Woman's National, 49; Report by Mrs. Quinton, 100–101. Indian Women, Legal Condition of, 237–241. Indiana, 325. Indianapolis, 220, 447. Indians, 100–101. Industrial Gains, Woman's, by Mary Liver- more, 131–137. Industrial, Associations, 10; School, 16. Industries, 14, 129–164; Statistics, 135; Vari- ous, Open to Women, 129, 130, 134, 135 ; Wºmen in Factories, 159; Wages of Women, 129, 133, 147, 148, 150, 151, 154; Women in Trades, 146–152. Industry and Art, Female Institute of, 203. ºntonal Council of Women. (See Coun- C11. - International Association of Friends of Girls, 262; Federation for the Abolition of State Regulation of Vice, 254. Iowa, 174, 175, 227. Illinois, 174. Ingalls, Senator J. J., on Woman Suffrage, 317, 318; Olive Frazer, 17. Hiiis, Marilla M., 15, 17, 49, 422; Report * Free Baptist Missions, 200. Hill, Sir Roland, 446. History of Woman Suffrage. (See Woman Suf- frage.) Hitchcock, Almeda E., 177. Hoffman, Clara Cleghorne, *::: 49, 448; Ad- 'Insane. (See Hospitals.) dress on Social Purity, 283–284. Hogbro, Mr. Svend, 204 Holland, 259, 394. Holyoake, George Jacob, 152, 153. Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 195. Holt, Mrs. Mary, 168. Holy Week, 421. - Holloway, Laura C., 14; Address, 167–169. Institutions, Women as Physicians in, 172. Institutive Power, by Martha McLellan Brown, 12, 80–82. Ireland, 9, 30, 232, 444. Isle of Man, 384, Italy, 15, 32, 151, 153,200, 259, 262, 388; Wo- §3. Condition in, by Signora Salazaro, 466 International Council of Women. Lee, Rev. Luther, 340; Sister of Robert, 331. Leeds, 152,258. Leffler, Mrs. Anna Charlotte Edgren, 458. Legal Conditions of Women, 226-245; In Italy, 212, 21.3; Among the Indians, 237; In the Three Kingdoms, 229–237; In Finland, 388, 889; In the United States, 226–229. Legal Disabilities of Women, by Lillie Deve- reux Blake, 226–229. Legalized Vice, 252, 253, 254, 255, 262; In Qrway, 282; In Italy, 212, 213. - Legions, Loyal Temperanee, 118, 125. Leipzig, 219. Leslie, Mrs. Frank, 184; Letter of, 442–443. Liberal Associations in England, Women’s, 15, 17, 40, 42, 46, 50, 304, 382. Lidgett, Elizabeth, S., 291. Libérator, The 337. Liberal Unionists, 384. Lily, The, 356, 360. Lincoln, Abraham, on Woman Suffrage, 338. º Mrs. Sarah (Grace Greenwood), 17; eminiscences of, 353–355. Livermore, Mary A., 14,49, 184,418, 448; Ad- dress, Woman's Industrial Gains during the Last Half-Century, 131–137. Liverpool, 9, 32. Loefgren, Mrs. Betty, 391, 458. Loeken, Mrs. Antonie, 458 : Miss Olany, 458. Lockwood, Mrs. Belva A., 175; Mrs. Mary S., 455, 456, Pººh, 9, 149, 150, 151, 166, 183, 255, 266, too. Longfellow, Samuel, 20, 22, 400, 424, Longshore, Dr. Hannah, 17, 41,352,356, 363. Lord, Frances, 41. Lords, House of, 266, 385. Loud, Miss Hulda B., 14, 142, 163; Address on Knights of Labor, 143–146. Louise, Queen of Prussia, 305; Crown Princess of Denmark, 203, 206 453; Letter of, 216. Louisiana, 131, 158, 458. Lowell, James Russell, 160 237. Lowell (iffering, The, 160, 161, 162,458. Lowry, Dr. Isabella and Dr. Agnes, 43. Loyal League, 189. Lozier, Dr. Clemence S., 17, 356. Lucas, Mrs. Margaret Bright, 9, 41, 115. Luther, Martin, 129, 404. Lussana, 213. M. J. Jackson, Andrew, 356; Francis, 337; J anette, §§i Dr. James C., 356; Letter of Dr. James, Jamaica, 459. Janeiro, Rio de 262. Japan, 114, 115, 126,459. Jefferson; Thomas, 292, 336. Jeffersonian Democrats, 308. Jeunes Filles, Union des Amies des, 203. Jewett, Sarah Mary, 42. Joan d’Arc, 134. Johns, Mrs. Laura M., 14, 16, 350, 456, 457; §§ress, Municipal Suffrage in Kansas, 315– Johnson, Oliver, 356; Letter of, 366–367. Journalism, Woman in, by Marion McBride, 183-184: Woman in Jöurnalism, by Laura C. Holloway, 167–169. Journal, The (New York), 168. Julian, Hon. George W., 356; Letter of, 362. June, Jennie. (See Croſy, Mrs.) Jury in Susan B. Anthony's Trial, 299, 300. Justin, 402. Justità, 357. K. Kalevala, 388. Kansas, 129, 130, 157, 174, 175, 225, 227, 251, 256, 335, 348,363, 364; Equal Suffrage As- Sociation, 14, 315. Karr, Hon. A. G., 175. Keefer, Mrs. Bessie Starr, 13, 46, 49, 50, 449; Address of, 116–118. Kelley, (Foster) Abby, 132,331, 332, 333, 338, 347, 354; Sketch of, by Mrs. Chace, 364–366. Kemp, Dr. Agnes, 458. - Kempin, Frau Dr. E., 177, 179. Kennan, Judge, 432. Kilgore, Carrie Burnham, 175. Kimball, Mrs. M. F., 140, 141. Kimber, Abby, 322. Kimberly, Mrs. Sherman, 141. Kindergarten, 12, 198: In its Development of Faculty, by Mrs. Cooper, 67–72; Mrs. Leland Stanford, 70. Kingsley, Charles, 137, 169, 171. Kirkland, Miss Eliza, 458. - Klein, Mr., 203. - Knights of Labor, 14, 50, 163; What they are Doing for Women, by Mrs. Barry, 153–156; by Hulda B. Loud, 143–146. Knowles, Mrs. Cordie B., 49 : Report of Chris- tian Woman’s Board of Missions, 459–460. Kvinden og Samfundet, 204. Kowalevski, Professor Sonja, 458. Krebs, Miss Johanna, 458. Krog, Miss Gina, 43,280. Kºtkin, Prince Pierre, 432; Iletter of, 438– - - T. La Cornélia, 214. La Donna, 21.4. ) Le Baron, Marie, 394. Labor, Organizations, 146; Question, 146; Sta- tistics, 130, 151 (see Knights of Labor); Labor Party, 309. Lamb, Charles, 303. Lamont, Secretary, 224 Laodicea, Council of, 404. . Lapland, 401. Laveleye, M. Emile de, 254, 259. Lausanne, International Congress at, 261. Law, Women in, by Mrs. Bittentender, 173– 179; Law in the Family, 241. Lazare, St. (Prison), 13, 49, 90, 92,93, 94; Re- port by Madame Bogelot, 90–94. - Lecky, 252. | Linnaeus, 401. Mºjº, Marion, 14; Paper on Journalism, Mºntoºk Elizabeth, 322; Mrs. Mary Ann, McDonnell, Mrs. Mary, 46, 49, 449. McDowell, Rose, 42. McLaren, Priscilla Bright (Mrs. Duncan), 44, 286, 344, 453: Letter of, 39–41; Mr. and Mrs. Charles, 9; Mr. and Mrs. Walter, 9. - McNeir, Mrs. Daura, 13,49; Address of, 88–89. McPherson, Mary E., 456. Macon, Council of, 405. Mackay, 343. Madonna, 126. Madras, 266. Magellan, Straits of, 262. Mahan, President, 341. Maine, 131, 154, 174. Mallet, from Louisiana, The, 458. | Manchester, 9. Mancini, 210. Mann, Charlotte Joy, 17. Mansfield, Arabella, A., 174. Mije, Mrs. Élien A. 16, 318. Marcellina, 403. S Indea. - 467 Mark Twain, 381. - Married Women's Property—In America, 226, 228; In England, 231 Maryland, 131, 173. Mason, Agnes, 43. Martin, E. W., 138: Ellen A., 174. Martineau, Harriet, 134, 161,258, 338, 362. Massachusetts, 131, 134, 144, 160, 174, 244, 309, 311, 325, 331, 337,357,457; School Suf- frage Association, 16, 49. Matrons, Police, by Mrs. Barney, 120–123. Maxamilla, 404. May, Miss Abby W., 310; Rev. Samuel, 333. Mayflower, The, 434. Mazzini, Joseph, 259. Medical Journal, British, 177. Medical Colleges (Admitting Women), of Bos- ton University, 97 : Woman’s, of £hiladél- phia, 96, 97: Geneva, 347 Medical Associations, 169. Medicine, Alcohol as, 123, 124, 125; Women in, by Dr. Stevenson, 14, 169–173. Mendenhall, Dinah, 17, 352. Merrick, Mrs. Caroline E., 49. Merritt, Dr. Emma S., 43 - Methodist Women's Missionary Societies, 447. Mexico, 179, 262. Meyerhelin, Madam Anderson, 115. Michaels, Rena A, 12, 14; Address on Women as Educators, 165–167; Co-education, 75–77. Michigan, 174, 354. - Milan, 210, 211. Milford, 242. Mill, John Stuart, 145, 165, 234, 335, 339, 384; Mrs. John Stuart, 393. Miller, Associate Justice, 175. Mines, Children in the, 247. Ministry, Women in the, 86, 88 : Number of, }}. Address by Rev. Ada C. Bowles, 180– Ministerial Conference, Women's, 49. Mºesota, 174; Woman Suffrage Association, Minneapolis, 318. Minor, Mrs. Virginia. D., 17, 256. Missionaries, Medical, 171. - Missionary, Wom an as, by Mrs. Jennie Fowler Willing, 86–88; Work, by Harriet N. Morris, 98–100. - Missionary Helper, Thé, 200. Mission ry Tidings, Thé, 460. Mººns Christian Woman's Board of, 49,459– Mississippi River, 262. Missouri, 174. Mitchell, Professor Maria, 166. Modern Language Association, 167. Mº }; Aurelia Hadley, 14, 50 ; Address of, —18 Moleschott, 213. Monrad, Bishop, 206, 393. Montana, 442, 459. Montevideo, 262. Montgomery, James, 19, 20, 418. Moore, Miss Rºbecca, 9; Mrs. Margaret, 44. Moody, Mr., 407. Moral Education Society of Boston, 16, 50, 272; of District of Columbia, 16. Moral Law, Identical for Both Sexes, 250, 254, 264, 276,277. Morandi, Felicita, 210. More, Hannah, 51. Morelli, 213. Morgan, Professor, 341. - -- Morris, Miss Harriet N., 13; Address, Mission- ary Work, 90–100. Morsier, Madame, Emily de, 90, 261. Morselli, 379. Morton, Dr. Pauline, 352. Mormonism, 290. Mount Vernon, 339. Moschus, John, 404. Moscow, 262. Mother Instinct, 245. Motherhood, 247; of God, 400. Mothers' Right to Children—In America, 227; In England, 233,234. Mott, James, 324, 335 ; Lucretia, 30, 31. 36, 246, 322, 323, 324, 325, 338, 346, 347, 348, 353, 354, 360, 363; Her Motto, 422; Lydia, 256; Richard, 36 Mullen, Mary M., 183. - Muller, Henrietta, 9, 40, 41; Mrs. Marie, 40. Mulvany, Isabella, 42. Municipal Suffrage for Women—In Belfast, 445; England, 383; Finland, 391; Kansas. 315–318. - - Mutual Improvement Association (Utah), 108 N. Nashville, 155. Nason, Mary, 456. Naples, 264. Napoleon, 305. A fional Era, The, 354. National Woman Suffrage Association, 9, 10. 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 30, 31, 33, 188, 438, 447, 454,455, 456; of Massachusetts, 276. Nationai Vigilance Association, 266. National Woman's Christian Temperance. Union. (See Woman’s, etc.) - Nebraska, 157, 159, 174. Neera, 210. Netherlands, The, 259. Newman, Mrs. J. P., 18, 400. New England Hospital for Women and Chil- gºn, 95, 354,432. (See also the Errata, page. New Hampshire, 131, 134. N § ersey, 131, 227, 339; Women Voting in, New Orleans, 131, 183, 185, 225, 262. New York, 15.52, 131, 132,133,146, 147,148, 149, 152, 155, 165, 167, 168, 174, 217, 255. 266, 325, 337,435. New York Committee for Prevention of State. Regulation of Vice, 16, 252, 255. New Mexico, 442. - New Paths (Neue Bahnen), 437. Newport, 437. News-Letter, The, 168. Neymann, Mrs. Clara, 17, 168, 315; Address, Sent mentalism in Politics, 398–399. Nichol, Mrs. Elizabeth Pease, 9, 40, 41, 264, 344, 356; Letter of, 357. Nichols, Clarina I. ., 36, 334, 356, 360; Sketch of, by Mary T. Gray, 363-364. Nicholson, Mrs. Eliza J., 183. Nielson, Mrs. Ragna, 279, 458. Nightingale, Florenge, 258. Nijni ovgorod, 262 Nihilists, 164,436. Nominations for Permanent Councils, Commit- tee on, 449. , North Carolina, 131, 174. Norway, 30, 32, 43, 178, 203, 205, 217, 259, 278, 281, 427, 429. Norwegian Woman's Suffrage Society, 43, 49. Nylaende, 280. Official Statement of the Council, 453, 454. O. Ohio, 174, 228, 325. “Old Sal,” 121, 122. -- %jº" Gift to found Woman's College, 427, Ongelin, Miss, 39 1. Order of the Eastern Star, 447. Oregon, 154, 174. 468 International Council of Women. Organization of Permanent Councils, Commit- tee on, 449. Organization, Sºssion of, 189–225; Power of, by Mrs. Jul a Ward Howe, 15, 189–195. “‘O’Rafferty, Mistress, on the Woman Ques- tion,” by Grace Greenwood, 355. Origen, 402. Orleans, Council of, 405. Orme, Miss Eliza, 9, 177. Ostler, Mrs. Alfred, 9. Our Union, 186, 188. Paine, Thomas, 145. Paley, Archbishop, 415. Pāī Ālū’ī’āº. 365.366. Palludan-Muller, 207. Palmer, Senator and Mrs. T. W., 458. Panama, 262. Paris, 9, 136, 151, 255, 440; Council of, 405. Parker, Mrs. Margaret E., 9, 41; Théodore, 330, 335. Parliament, English, 260, 384. Parnell, Mr., 305, Parsons, Miss E., 456; Henry C., 455. Pastoral Letter, The 337. Patents Granted to Women, 135,136. Peace Union, Universal, 49; Woman's Peace || and International Arbitration Society, 49. Pearce, Martha K., 176. Peirce, Sarah H., 17. Pºylvania, 131, 154, 156, 175, 247, 331, Pericles, 180. Perovskaya, Sophia, 439, 441. Persians, The ſº-1. Peters, Louise Otto, 219. Petersburg, St., 178. Petitioners for Woman Suffrage, 293. Pettingill, Mrs. E. F., 456. Phelps, 338. Pºlelphia, 123, 133, 136, 168, 218, 255,344, Philanthropies, Session of, 12, 83–109. Philips, Mrs., 9. Phillips, Wendell, 36, 247, 331, 335, 338, 342; Mrs. Ann Green, 322. Physicians, Women as, 171. Pioneers. (See Conference.) Pierantoni, Grazia, 210 Pierre, Eugenie Potonie, 41. Pierce, Secretary of State, 242. Pierson, Jane, 360. Pindar, 165. Pit Brow Women, 230. Plymouth Rock, 434. Poet, Lidia, 177, 178. Poland, 180. Police Matrons, 272. (See Matrons.) Political Club (Copenhagen), 447. - Political Conditions—1st Session of, 16, 290– 321; 2d Session of, 17, 369–400. Political Parties and Woman Suffrage, by Har- ºriet H. Robinson, 16, 306–309. Politics, Sentimentalism in, by Mrs. Clara Ney- mann, 17, 398–399. Pomeroy, Hon. Samuel C., 17,348. Poor Law in England, 383. Pope Leo XIII., 406. Popular Sci nce Monthly, 196, 369, 380. Porter, Rºbert P., 43. Portland, 122. Post, Amy, 17, 327, 35 Potomac, 128. Poverty of Women, 170. Powderly, Terence V., 153. Powell, Mrs. Anna Rice, 16, 50: Address, 250– 257; Miss Maud, 14, 173. Poyser, Mrs., 244. Press Association, Woman's International, 14, 2 Helief Corps of the G. A. R., Woman's. 50, 182: Report of, 183–184: Woman's Na- gºal, 14, 50, 185; Statistics of, 184, 185, 186. Preston, Ann, 352. Pr ce, Rebecca Newell, 42. Priestman, Anna and Mary, 9, 41, 42. Primrose League, 304, 385, 447. Brimaries. The titah). Toš, ióð. Pº, Work in Paris, by Madame Bogelot, Prºfessions, Session of, 165–188. Programme of the Council, 11–23. Prohibition, Movement in Great Britain, 17; Party in America, 308, 309. Prostitution. (See Legalized Vice.) Protestant Episcopal Women's Missionary So- ciety, 447. Prot stant Prisons, Work in the (France), 447. Protection of Young Girls, League for the, 447. Pugh, Miss Esther, 126: Miss Sarah, 322. Pundita Ramabai Sarasvati. (See Ramabai.) Purvis, Harr et, 456: Robert, 17, 47; Remi- niscences of, 342–344. Putnam, Caroline A., 17. Pythagoras, 420. łuarterly Review, Qberlin, 341. ueen of Italy, 209, 210, 214. ueensland, 183. uinton, Mrs. Amelia S., 13, 49: Report of Wºmen's National Indian Association, 100– T. Rºad Rates for Council, Committee on, 455, OU). Ralph, Mary, 42. Ramabai Sarasvati, Pundita, 12, 27, 44, 86, 255; Address, The Women of India, 63-67. Raphael, Clara, 393. Rassegna degli Interessi Femminili (Beview of Women's Interests), 214. Reach the Children, How to, by Miss Anna Gordon, 13, 188–119. Reading Clubs, Women's, 447. Rebekah, Daughters of, 447. Reception, The Public, 23. Red Cross, The, 13,49, 352; In Denmark, 394; Address on, by Miss Clara Barton, 103–107. Reforms, the Outgrowths of the Woman Suffrage Agitation, 34. - Regulationists, The, 256. Reid, Clementine, 183. (See Grand Army.) Religious—Service, 11, 24–29, Symposium, 400–425; Truths which can be Established by Science, 407-415. Rºle The, 128, 167; Battle Hymn of, Republican Party, The, 307, 308, 309, 339. Republican, The Springfield, 307. Revolution, The, 36. Hevolution, 146, 154, 164: The French, 145. Rhode Island, 131, 167, 364. Rich, The Neglected, Address by Frances El- len Harper, 119–120. Richards, Mrs. Emily S., 13, 49; Reports of, 107–109,455 (Jane, mistake for Emily). Richardson, Mrs. Victoria M., 13, 49, 50, 449; Heport of, 88: Maria, 289. Richer, Leon, 90. Riga 262. - #. House, The, 241, 315, 448, 449,455,457. Rights of Women, Property, 132. (See Legal Conditions.) Rigsdag, The 203, 205. | Rixford, Sallie M., 456. Robespierre, 145. Indea. - 469 Robinson, Mrs. Harriet H., 16, 22, 159, 162, 335, 458: Address of 305-30%); W. S. (War. rington), 307; leila j., 176, 177. Rochdale, 152, 153. - - Rochester, 327. Rºß Mrs. Caroline Gilkey, 456; Hon. Henry ade, 174; Dr. Seth and Anna, 458. Rogstad, Miss Anna, 458. Roland, Madame, 33. Romanes, Professor, 375. Rome, 91, 180, 181, 190, 209, 210, 268. Rose, Ernestine L., 189, 355, 357; Extracts from Address, 358-360. Rowsing, Mrs., 203. Russell, Hon. Charles T., 176. Russell, Harriet W., 42; Penelope, 168; Mr., 9. fºussia. 153, Tºš, 130, 362,38s. 336, 391, ſº, 432, 438, 440. Russian, 262. S. Salazaro, Fanny Zampini, 15, 458; Paper, The Women of Italy, 208–214. Salisbury, Lor 1, 37, 384. Sand, George, 255. Sºgºnt, Mrs. Ellen Clark, 455; Dr. Elizabeth, Saxon, Mrs. Elizabeth Lisle, 16,453, 457; Ad- §s. The Truth Shall Make You Free, 248– - º Sayles, Mrs. Lita Barney, 14, 50, 448; Address, o-operation, the Law of the New Civiliza- tion. 152–153. Scatcherd, Mrs. Alice (Mrs. Oliver), 9, 15, 40, 44, 45, 49, 50, 448, 449; Address, Legal Con- ditions of Women in the Three Kingdoms, 229–237. School Suffrage, 167; In England. 383; In Mºsachusetts. 242; by Mrs. Everett, 309– Schmidt, Auguste, 219. Schroeder. Mr., 207. Schurz, Carl, 368. Science, Medical, 170. Scotland, 9, 30, 232. Scudder, Eliza, 21. Seiden, judge, 300. Self-Respect of Women, 350. Seneca Falls Convention, 322, 324, 327, 328, 331, 336, 339, 343, 352, 367, 432. Sentinel, The, 255. Serao, Mathilde, 210. Servants, Experiences of, 201,202. Severance, Mrs. Caroline M., 272, 339, 342; Letter of, 366. Sewall, May Yº; 10, 11, 12, 15, 448, 449, 456; Address, Higher Education of Women in the Ú. S. 51:53; organization, 220-222; Presentation at Pioneers' Session, 350–351. Sewall, Dr. Lucy, 97; Hon. Samuel E., 356; Letter of, 359. Seward, Mrs., 325. Sex in Brain, by Helen Gardener, 369-382. Seymour, Miss Mary F., 455, 457. Shanghai, 262. Shattuck, Mrs. Harriette R., 13, 16, 83, 89, 350, 456, 457; Address on Social Purity, 276– 278. Shaw, Rev. Annie H., 11, 12, 14, 51, 129, 181; 351; Sermon of, 24–29; Voting for School Committee in Massachusetts, 311-313. Shay, Mrs., 176; M. B. R., 175. Shedden, Arabella, 178. Sheldon, Miss Ellen H., 11, 456. Shepherd, Mrs. Hannah McL., 106. Shortridge, Mrs. S. E., 460. Siberia, 262, 392, 432. Signal, The, 188. Simon, Jules, 259. Sinaitic Codex, 402. Singapore, 262. Slavery, 248. Smith, Gerritt, 275, 280, 349; Hannah Whit- all, 13, 49, 448; Address, The Latest Evolu- tion of the W. C. T. U., 114–116; Sarah M., 457; Sidney, 51. Smithson, Lucy, 43. Snow, Georgie, 456. Social Purity, Session for Women Alone, 16, 246-291; Abolition of Government Regula- tion of Vice, York Branch of the Society for, Letter, 289; Abolition Society (Leeds), 260: Address of Mrs. Hoffman, 283–284; Age of Consent, 256, 290; Bad Houses in the Coun- try, 269; Blue Book, 266; Children Out- raged, 263; Edinburgh Branch of the Feder- ation for the Repeal of the State Regulation of Vice, 49; Girl throws herself off London Bridge, 271; Increase of Defectives, 275; Incident of Girl taken to France, 267; Li- censed House in Antwerp, 268; Marriage, 274, 277, 284; Marriage Reform, 284–285 ; Member of Parliament desires Age of Con- sent Lowered, 266; Norway, 281; Rescue Work, 274; Round Dances, 287; Putting Criminal Law in Force, 269 ; The Starting Point, by Dr. Caroline B. Winslow, 273–275; Self-Respect, 287; Women attending meet- ings veiled, 265 Socialists, 164, 436. sºokie Society of America, 14, 50, 146, 152, to j. Socra' eS, 165, 181. Somerset Club, 447. | Somerville, Mary, 73, 258. Sor, sis, 15, 50, 218, 225, 367; Report of, 215. South Carolina, 131. Southport, 229, Southwick, Abby, 322, 356; Joseph, 329; Sarah H., 17, 337; Thankful, 329. Sºuthworth, Mrs. Louisa, 457. Sorenson, Rev. C., 200. Spain, 153, 180, 259. Spear, Catharine Swan, 17. Spencer, Herbert, 375,406. Sperry, Hannah B., 456, 457. Spitzka, Dr. E. C., 372; Letter of, 381–382. Spofford, Mr. C. W., 453; Mrs. Jane H., 10, 11, 23, 123,453, 454, 456. Spurzheim, 380. St. Louis, 255. St. Petersburg, 262, 266. Stamp Act, 168. Stanton, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady, 9, 10, 11, 12, 17, 18, 31, 34, 40, 47, 256, 327,329, 334, 340, 343. 350, 353, 354, 360, 369, 381, 398, 439, 440, 444, 453, 456; Address of Welcome, 31–39; Reminiscences, 322–325; Closing Address, 431–438. - Stanton, Henry B., 356; Mr. and Mrs. Theo- dore, 9; Theodore, 41; I etter of, 445–446. Stanford, Mrs. Leland, 455, 458; Senator Le- land, 458. State Fair Association, Women's, 447. State Regulation of Vice, 234. (See Social Purity.) Statist CS of Criminals, Male and Female, 181. Stead, William P., 256, 265, 266 Stearns, Mrs. Sarah Burger, 458. Stebbins, Catharine A. F., 17, 327. Steer, Miss, 270. Stepniak. 433. Stenius, Mrs., 390, 391. Sternberg, Count Ungern, 259. Stevenson, Dr. Sarah Hackett, 14; Address, Woman in Medicine, 169–173. Steward, Mrs., 40,257. Stewart, Alvin, 349. 470 - International Council of Women. Stone, Mrs. Tucy, 15, 17, 32, 46, 47, 75, 189, 334, 338, 340, 341, 343, 354, 357, 360, 366, 398, 448; Address, on Legal Conditions, 241– - #: ; The Advance in Fifty Years, 331– Stone, Catharine, 42; Chief Justice, 176. Storthing, The, (Norway), 280. Stowell, Mrs. Louisa Reed, 12, 49, 457; Ad- dress, Retrospection, 72–75. Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 440. - Stuart, Elizabeth G., 18; The Power of Thought, 420; Professor, 254, 259. Studies at Home, Society to Encourage, 447. Students, Association (Denmark), 447. Sturge, Emily and Helen M., 42; Joseph, 322. Subordinate Position of Women, 33. Suffrage, Universal, 387: School, 16, 34, 309– 313; Municipal, 16, 34, 315–318; Kansas Equal Suffrage Association, 129; Woman Suffrage Association of the District of Co- lumbia, 123. (See Woman Suffrage, Political Conditions, American W. S.A., National W. S. A., etc.) Sumner, Charles, 302, 307, 349. Sunderland, Rev., 347. Supreme Court of the United States, 174. Surgery, 173. Suez, 262. Swiss Schools, 220. Switzerland, 171, 179, 259, 262. Sweden, 178, 205, 217, 259, 394. Swedenborg, Brain of, 404. Symonds, Mrs. Tunie H., 456. T. Table, Thé (Tondon), 407. Talmage, Bev. T. DeWitt, Letter of, 441–442. Tanner, Sarah Jane, 42. Tappan, 338. - - Taylor, Mrs. Peter (Mentia), 9,344, 458; Emily inslow, 17; Helen, 9 Temple, The Temperance, by Mrs. Matilda B. Carse, 125–127. - Temperance, 13, 49; Session of, 83–128; Brit- ish Woman’s Temperance Association, 49, 115; Children's Work, 13, 118–119, 127, 128; Edinburgh Association, 49; Headquarters, 125, 126; National Temperance Hospital, 123–125; London Temperance Hospital, 124; Liquor traffic, 119 ; Loyal Legions, 118, 125; Mottoes, 110; National Temperance Hospital and Medical College Association, 49; Peti- tions, 115, 116; In the South, 111; Unions, 10; White Ribbon, 110, 111, 114, 118: World's Temperance Convention, 341; World's W. T. U., 114–116; Woman's Crusade, 110. Tennessee, 131. - Testman, Miss Caroline, 203. Texas, 157, 158, 262. Theodoret, 404. Theology, Meadville School,86. Thomas, Hev. Abel C., 161, 162; Annie, 42; Víºs. Wi. i.ouise, ſh, Bo Tà1 ſ62. 333. 443. 449; Address of, 215–217 ; Dr. Mary F., 356; Letter of, 362-363. Thomasson, Mr. and Mrs. J. P., 9, 41. Thompson, Elizabeth, 455. Thomson, M. Adeline, 17, 352,455. Thoreson, Cecilia, 279. Tºtius Dr. Franziska, 97; Dr. Henriette, Tiffany, Amanda C., 457. Timothee, Mrs. Elizabeth, 168. Tischendorf, 402. Tod, Miss Isabella M., 9, 41, 445. Tome, James A., 340. Topelius, 39. . Topinard, 374. - Toronto, 116. (See Canada.) Trades, Women in the, by Helen Campbell, 14, 146–152. Traffic in Women for Prostitution, 262. Travelers' Aid Society, 203, 266, 272. Tribune, The (New York), 168, 339,347,353. Tribune. The Woman's, 36, 188, 357, 425,448, 455. Truth, Sojourner, 417. - Trygg, Miss Alli, 18; Farewell, 425-427. Tschita, 262. Turin, 178, 211. Turner, Margaret A., 41, 42. U. Union Signal, The, 188. Union, The German Women's, 219; The Lette, 220; Industrial and Educational, 15, 50, 198–200,272. - Unitarian, 181; American Association, 84, 85, 86; Post-Office Mission, 85, 88; Women's Work, 13, 83–86, 88,89; Women's Auxiliary Conference, 13, 85; Western Women's Con- ference, 13, 88; Women as Ministers, 86,88. United States, 30, 51, 117, 124, 128, 130, 135, 173, 184, 265, 382, 444. - Universities, Boston, 176; of the City of New York, 217; Columbian, 174; Copenhagen, 179, 206, 393; Cornell, 77, 79; Georgetºwn, 174; Harvard, 52, 60, 174; Helsingfors (Fin- land), 389, 390; Iowa, 175; Johns Hopkins, 60, 78, 79, 166, 167; of Italy, 178; of Lon- don, 97; of Michigan, 12, 59, 60, 179; North- Westºn, iº, iééºyal of freſanā), 97,445; Syracuse, 3.17 ; Wesleyan, 79; Yale, 174; Contemplated University for German Wo- men, 220. - Universalist Church, 181; Women's Centen- nary Association of, 49. Utah. Women's Association of, 13, 16, 49, 107– 109, 174. V. Valparaiso, 262. Van Buren, 339. - Van der Voort, Paul, 102. Vandals, 264. Vatican Codex, 402. Vaughn, Mary C., 360. Venaing, Emma, 42. Venice, 211. Vice. (See Legalized.) Victoria, Empress of Germany, 286, 304, 453. Victoria, Queen of England, 433. Vienna, 135. - - Vigilance Association, National (England), 16, 50; Letters from, 289-291. Vigilance Council, 267. Villa, Tommaso, 212. Vincént, M. Dupuis, Letter of, 443–444. Virginia, 131, 337. Viroqua, Princess, 241. - W. Wages of Women, 391. Waite, Catharine V., 17, 176, 177. Wall, Sarah E., 17. Wallace, Mrs. Zerelda G., 13, 18, 459; Address on Moral Power of the Ballot, 428–430; Al- fred Russell, 418. - Wanzer, Dr. Lucy M. F., 43. Warner, Esther L., 14; Address, Women as Farmers, 156–159. - Washington, George, 311, 366; Washington Čity, ſo iè3. 355; Territory, 174, iii.339, 435, 442. - Wattles, Esther, 17; Susan E., 17. Waugh, Catharine G., 175. - Webb, Deborah, 43; Wilhelmina, 42. Webster, Brain of, 38 - Wecker, Johanna Fréderica, 46. In deac. - 471 Weld, Theodore, 356; Letter of, 360–362. Wells, Mrs. Kate Gannett, 272. Wellstood, Jennie M., 361. Wendt, Mathilde F., 368. Wesley, 404. Westminster Review, 339. Whigs, 319, 338,339. White, Armenia S., 356. White, Blanco, Sonnet, 417. - - White Cross Association, etc., 256, 257, 318, 406. White Ribbon, 257. (See Temperance.) White Slave Trade, 254, 257–264, 266, 267, 268, 291. Whitney, Anne, 134. Whittier, John G., 19, 20, 113, 289, 322, 354, 356; Letter of, 358–359. Whittle, Dr. and Mrs. Ewing, 9,458. Wife, supported, 243; Earnings of, 228, 231, 243; Wife Beaters, 235; Wife's Property in New York, 325. Wigham, Miss Eliza, 9, 41,264, 344; Hannah Maria, 42. Wºur. Mrs. Charlotte B., 9; Letter of, 367– 8. Wilbur, Julia A., 17. Wilcox, Albert O., 17,352. Willard, Mrs. Emma (Troy), 51, 52, 56, 59, 167; Mrs. Mary B., 116, 188. - Willard, Frances E., 13, 15, 16, 18, 47, 49.50, 77,114,125, 186,187,257,305,351,422,448, 449, 453: Addresses, on Organization, 222- 224; Social Purity, 286-289; Temperange, 110-114; Woman Suffrage, 319–321; in the Religious Symposium, 422–424. William, Emperor of Germany, 305. Williams, Mary Hamilton, 455. Willing, Jennie Fowler, 13; Address, Woman as Missionary, 86–88. Willis, Sarah H., 17, 327. Wilson, Hon. Henry J.; 255. Winslow, Dr. Caroline B., 16, 17,256,352; Ad- dress, The Starting Point, 273–275; Emily, 322, 338. Wintôr, Aloise, 219. Wisconsin, 174. Wise, Ella, 456. - Woman Question, The, 256. Woman Suffrage, The History of, (by Mes- dames Stanton, Anthony, and Gage), 35,169, 3.29, 356, 368; Associations (see American, National, Norwegian, Suffrage, etc.); Vote of Audience Upon, 350; Movement, 327. Woman Suffrage Conventions, 132; Cleveland, 366; Massilon, 366; Mount Vernon, 366; Newport, 437; New York, 81: Syracuse, 366; Worcester, 339. (See Seneca Falls; see also Women's Suffrage.) Womanliness, 157. Womanly Women, 247. Woman's Christian Temperance Union, 13, 14, 16, 122, 188,272, 289, 395. “Woman’s Congress,” 218. - Woman's Condition in Italy, by Fanny Zam- ini Salazaro, 208–214. - oman's Influence in Law, 177. Woman's Journal, Thé, 36,357. Woman’s Rights Society, Norway, 280. Woman’s Rights, 206. Woman's Temperance Publication Associa- tion, 186–188. - Woman's Tribune, The. (See Tribune.) Women on the Jury, 244. Women to Stand b Women, 261. Women's Liberal Associations, 229, 385. Women's Relief Associations, 49. 107; Primary Associations, 49, 108; Property Rights Among Indians, 239. Women’s Suffrage, British National Society for, 447; Edinburgh National Society for, 15, 16, 49, 229; Glasgow Association for, 49; Norwegian Women’s Suffrage Associa- tion, 49. Wood, Dr. Ruth M., 16, 352. Wolcott, Dr. Laura Ross, 458. Wolfe, Miss, 313. - Wolstonecraft, Mary, 33, 51, 52, 384, 393. Woodhall, Mr., 384. Wººster, 132, 172; County (Massachusetts), Worden, Mrs. Anna M., 14, 50; Address, Women in the Grange, 137–142. Working Women of To-day, by Helen Camp- bell, 146–151. Working Women's National Beneficial Fund, Working Women's Guild, 218. World's Anti-Slavery Convention, 322. Worm, Miss Paul ne, 393. Worm. The, Developing into the Insect, 417. Wright, Hon. Carroll D., 135; Elizur, 338; Frances E., 33, 356; Mrs. Martha C., 36, 322, 323, 324, 325 Wyoming i75, 177, 339, 435,442. Y. Yates, Dr. Elizabeth 43. Yorkshire, 229. Young Woman's Christian Association, 203; of England, 266. Young Ladies' Mutual Improvement Associa- tion, 49, 108. Z Zahle, Miss Nathalie, 207, 394. Zakrzewska, Dr. Marie E., 46, 95, 96. Zanardelli, Giuseppe, 212. " Zeuger, Mrs., 168. Zon. Marcello, Countess, 211. Zurich, 179. Iliſiii. "########3 |（~~~~ R . f Illlllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll | un S-1-A In Jo An - Hina – uef, C）) CO O |- U. O £ € + N) U. C）) O CO O Cael