Part 15

Eagerly Susan looked for favorable notices of her new paper in the press. Much to her sorrow, Horace Greeley's New York _Tribune_ completely ignored its existence, as did her old standby, the _Antislavery Standard_. The New York _Times_ ridiculed as usual anything connected with woman's rights or woman suffrage. The New York _Home Journal_ called it "plucky, keen, and wide awake, although some of its ways are not at all to our taste." Theodore Tilton in the Congregationalist paper, _The Independent_, commented in his usual facetious style, which pinned him down neither to praise nor unfriendliness, but Susan was grateful to read, "_The Revolution_ from the start will arouse, thrill, edify, amuse, vex, and non-plus its friends. But it will command attention: it will conquer a hearing." Newspapers were generally friendly. "Miss Anthony's woman's rights paper," declared the Troy (New York) _Times_, "is a realistic, well-edited, instructive journal ... and its beautiful mechanical execution renders its appearance very attractive." The Chicago _Workingman's Advocate_ observed, "We have no doubt it will prove an able ally of the labor reform movement." Nellie Hutchinson of the Cincinnati _Commercial_, one of the few women journalists, described sympathetically for her readers the neat comfortable _Revolution_ office and Susan with her "rare" but "genial smile," Susan, "the determined--the invincible ... destined to be Vice-President or Secretary of State...," adding, "The world is better for thee, Susan."[211]

While new friends praised, old friends pleaded unsuccessfully with Mrs. Stanton and Parker Pillsbury to free themselves from Susan's harmful influence. William Lloyd Garrison wrote Susan of his regret and astonishment that she and Mrs. Stanton had so taken leave of their senses as to be infatuated with the Democratic party and to be associated with that "crack-brained harlequin and semi-lunatic," George Francis Train. She published his letter in _The Revolution_ with an answer by Mrs. Stanton which not only pointed out how often the Republicans had failed women but reminded Garrison how he had welcomed into his antislavery ranks anyone and everyone who believed in his ideas, "a motley crew it was." She recalled the label of fanatic which had been attached to him, how he had been threatened and pelted with rotten eggs for expressing his unpopular ideas and for burning the Constitution which he declared sanctioned slavery. With such a background, she told him, he should be able to recognize her right and Susan's to judge all parties and all men on what they did for woman suffrage.[212]

None of these arguments made any impression upon Garrison, or upon Lucy Stone, whose bitter criticism and distrust of Susan's motives wounded Susan deeply. Only a few of her old friends seemed able to understand what she was trying to do, among them Martha C. Wright, who, at first critical of her association with Train, now wrote of _The Revolution_, "Its vigorous pages are what we need. Count on me now and ever as your true and unswerving friend."[213]

[Illustration: Anna E. Dickinson]

Another bright spot was Susan's friendship with Anna E. Dickinson, with whom she carried on a lively correspondence, scratching oft hurried notes to her on the backs of old envelopes or any odd scraps of paper that came to hand. Whenever Anna was in New York, she usually burst into the _Revolution_ office, showered Susan with kisses, and carried on such an animated conversation about her experiences that the whole office force was spellbound, admiring at the same time her stylish costume and jaunty velvet cap with its white feather, very becoming on her short black curls.

Repeatedly Susan urged Anna to stay with her in her "plain quarters" at 44 Bond Street or in her "nice hall bedroom" at 116 East Twenty-third Street. That Anna could have risen out of the hardships of her girlhood to such popularity as a lecturer and to such financial success was to Susan like a fairy tale come true. Scarcely past twenty, Anna not only had moved vast audiences to tears, but was sought after by the Republicans as one of their most popular campaign speakers and had addressed Congress with President Lincoln in attendance. Susan had been sadly disappointed that Anna had not seen her way clear to speak a strong word for women in the Kansas campaign, but she hoped that this vivid talented young woman would prove to be "the evangel" who would lead women "into the kingdom of political and civil rights." It never occurred to her that she herself might even now be that "evangel."[214]

* * * * *

By this time Susan had been called on the carpet by some of the officers of the American Equal Rights Association because she had used the Association's office as a base for business connected with the Train lecture tour and the establishment of _The Revolution_. She was also accused of spending the funds of the Association for her own projects and to advertise Train. Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, and Stephen Foster were particularly suspicious of her. Her accounts were checked and rechecked by them and found in good order. However, at the annual meeting of the Association in May 1868, Henry Blackwell again brought the matter up. Deeply hurt by his public accusation, she once more carefully explained that because there had been no funds except those which came out of her own pocket or had been raised by her, she had felt free to spend them as she thought best. This obviously satisfied the majority, many of whom expressed appreciation of her year of hard work for the cause. She later wrote Thomas Wentworth Higginson, "Even if not one old friend had seemed to have remembered the past and it had been swallowed up, overshadowed by the Train cloud, I should still have rejoiced that I have done the work--for no _human_ prejudice or power can rob me of the joy, the compensation, I have stored up therefrom. That it is wholly spiritual, I need but tell you that this day, I have not two hundred dollars more than I had the day I entered upon the public work of woman's rights and antislavery."[215]

What troubled her most at these meetings was not the animosity directed against her by Henry Blackwell and Lucy Stone, but the assertion, made by Frederick Douglass and agreed to by all the men present, that Negro suffrage was more urgent than woman suffrage. When Lucy Stone came to the defense of woman suffrage in a speech whose content and eloquence Susan thought surpassed that of "any other mortal woman speaker," she was willing to forgive Lucy anything, and wrote Thomas Wentworth Higginson, "I want you to _know_ that it is impossible for me to lay a straw in the way of anyone who _personally wrongs me_, if only that one will work nobly in the _cause_ in their own way and time. They may try to hinder my success but I _never_ theirs."

Realizing that it would be futile for her to spend any more time trying to persuade the American Equal Rights Association to help her with her woman suffrage campaign, she now formed a small committee of her own, headed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It included Elizabeth Smith Miller, the liberal wealthy daughter of Gerrit Smith, Abby Hopper Gibbons, the Quaker philanthropist and social worker; and Mary Cheney Greeley, the wife of Horace Greeley, who, in spite of the fact that her husband now opposed woman suffrage, continued to take her stand for it. This committee, with _The Revolution_ as its mouthpiece, was soon acting as a clearing house for woman suffrage organizations throughout the country and called itself the Woman's Suffrage Association of America.

To the national Republican convention in Chicago which nominated General Grant for President, these women sent a carefully worded memorial asking that the rights of women be recognized in the reconstruction. It was ignored. Thereupon Susan turned to the Democrats, attending with Mrs. Stanton a preconvention rally in New York, addressed by Governor Horatio Seymour. Given seats of honor on the platform, they attracted considerable attention and the New York _Sun_ commented editorially that this honor conferred upon them by the Democrats not only committed Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton to Governor Seymour's views but also committed the Democrats to incorporate a woman suffrage plank in their platform.

This was too much for some of the officers of the American Equal Rights Association, whose executive committee now adopted a sarcastic resolution proposing that Susan attend the national Democratic convention and prove her confidence in the Democrats by securing a plank in their platform.

Ignoring the unfriendly implications of this resolution and the ridicule heaped upon her by the New York City papers, Susan made plans to attend the Democratic convention, which for the first time since the war was bringing northern and southern Democrats together for the dedication of their new, imposing headquarters, Tammany Hall, and which was also attracting many liberals who, disgusted by the corruption of the Republicans, were looking for a "new departure" from the Democrats. To the amazement of the delegates, Susan with Mrs. Stanton and several other women walked into the convention when it was well under way and sent a memorial up to Governor Seymour who was presiding. He received it graciously, announcing that he held in his hand a memorial of the women of the United States signed by Susan B. Anthony, and then turned it over to the secretary to be read while the audience shouted and cheered. The sonorous passages demanding the enfranchisement of women rang out through and above the bedlam: "We appeal to you because ... you have been the party heretofore to extend the suffrage. It was the Democratic party that fought most valiantly for the removal of the 'property qualification' from all white men and thereby placed the poorest ditch digger on a political level with the proudest millionaire.... And now you have an opportunity to confer a similar boon on the women of the country and thus ... perpetuate your political power for decades to come...."[216]

To hear these words read in a national political convention was to Susan worth any ridicule she might be forced to endure. She was not allowed to speak to the convention as she had requested, and shouts and jeers continued as her memorial was hurriedly referred to the Resolutions committee where it could be conveniently overlooked.

The Republican press reported the incident with sarcasm and animosity, the _Tribune_ deeply wounding her: "Miss Susan B. Anthony has our sincere pity. She has been an ardent suitor of democracy, and they rejected her overtures yesterday with screams of laughter."[217]

The Democrats' nomination of Horatio Seymour and Frank Blair was as reactionary and unpromising of a "new departure" as was the choice of General Grant and Schuyler Colfax by the Republicans. Thereupon _The Revolution_ called for a new party, a people's party which would be sincerely devoted to the welfare of all the people. So strongly did Susan feel about this that in one of her few signed editorials she declared, "Both the great political parties pretending to save the country are only endeavoring to save themselves.... In their hands humanity has no hope.... The sooner their power is broken as parties the better.... _The Revolution_ calls for construction, not reconstruction.... Who will aid us in our grand enterprise of a nation's salvation?"[218]

To "darling Anna" she wrote more specifically, "Both parties are owned body and soul by the _Gold Gamblers_ of the Nation--and so far as the honest working men and women of the country are concerned, it matters very little which succeeds. Oh that the Gods would inspire men of influence and money to move for a third party--universal suffrage and anti-monopolist of land and gold."[219]

FOOTNOTES:

[207] July 6, 1866, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress.

[208] _The Revolution_, I, Jan. 8, 1868, pp. 1-12.

[209] _Ibid._

[210] _Ibid._, April 23, June 25, 1868, pp. 49, 392.

[211] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 296-297, 302-303; _The Revolution_, I, Jan. 22, 1868, p. 34.

[212] _The Revolution_, I, Jan. 29, 1868, p. 243.

[213] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 301.

[214] March 18, May 4, 1868, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress. Susan had a room at the Stantons until they prepared to move to their new home in Tenafly, New Jersey.

[215] Aug. 20, 1868, Higginson Papers, Boston Public Library.

[216] _The Revolution_, II, July 9, 1868, p. 1.

[217] _Ibid._, July 16, 1868, p. 17.

[218] _Ibid._, Aug. 6, 1868, p. 72.

[219] July 10, 1868, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress.

WORK, WAGES, AND THE BALLOT

In her zeal to promote the welfare of all the people, Susan now turned her attention to the workingwomen of New York, whose low wages, long hours, and unhealthy working and living conditions had troubled her for a long time. Women were being forced out of the home into the factory by a changing and expanding economy, and at last were being paid for their work. However, the women she met on the streets of New York, hurrying to work at dawn and returning late at night, weary, pale, and shabbily dressed, had none of the confidence of the economically independent. They had merely exchanged one form of slavery for another. She saw the ballot as their most powerful ally, and as she told the factory girls of Cohoes, New York, they could compel their employers to grant them a ten-hour day, equal opportunity for advancement, and equal pay, the moment they held the ballot in their hands.[220]

As yet labor unions were few and short-lived. The women tailors of New York had formed a union as early as 1825, but it had not survived, and later attempts to form women's unions had rarely been successful. A few men's unions had weathered the years, but they had not enrolled women, fearing their competition. Women were welcomed only by the National Labor Union, established in Baltimore in 1866 for the purpose of federating all unions.

When the National Labor Union Congress met in New York in September 1868, Susan saw an opportunity for women to take part, and in preparation she called a group of workingwomen together in _The Revolution_ office to form a Workingwomen's Association which she hoped would eventually represent all of the trades. At this meeting, the majority were from the printing trade, typesetters operating the newly invented typesetting machines, press feeders, bookbinders, and clerks, in whom she had become interested through her venture in publishing. She wanted them to call their organization the Workingwomen's Suffrage Association, but they refused, because they feared the public's disapproval of woman suffrage and were convinced they should not seek political rights until they had improved their working conditions. She could not make them see that they were putting the cart before the horse. They did, however, form Workingwomen's Association No. 1, electing her their delegate to the National Labor Congress.

Next she called a meeting of the women in the sewing trades, and with the help of men from the National Labor Union, persuaded a hundred of them to form Workingwomen's Association No. 2. Most of these women were seamstresses making men's shirts, women's coats, vests, lace collars, hoop skirts, corsets, fur garments, and straw hats, but also represented were women from the umbrella, parasol, and paper collar industry, metal burnishers, and saleswomen. Most of them were young girls who worked from ten to fourteen hours a day, from six in the morning until eight at night, and earned from $4 to $8 a week.

"You must not work for these starving prices any longer ...," Susan told them. "Have a spirit of independence among you, 'a wholesome discontent,' as Ralph Waldo Emerson has said, and you will get better wages for yourselves. Get together and discuss, and meet again and again.... I will come and talk to you...."[221] They elected Mrs. Mary Kellogg Putnam to represent them at the National Labor Congress.

With Mrs. Putnam and Kate Mullaney, the able president of the Collar Laundry Union of Troy, New York, with Mary A. MacDonald of the Women's Protective Labor Union of Mt. Vernon, New York, and Mrs. Stanton, representing the Woman's Suffrage Association of America, Susan knocked at the door of the National Labor Congress. All were welcomed but Mrs. Stanton, who represented a woman suffrage organization and whose acceptance the rank and file feared might indicate to the public that the Labor Congress endorsed votes for women.

The women had a friend in William H. Sylvis of the Iron Molders' Union, who was the driving force behind the National Labor Congress, and he made it clear at once that he welcomed Mrs. Stanton and everyone else who believed in his cause. So strong, however, was the opposition to woman suffrage among union men that eighteen threatened to resign if Mrs. Stanton were admitted as a delegate. The debate continued, giving Susan an opportunity to explain why the ballot was important to workingwomen. "It is the power of the ballot," she declared, "that makes men successful in their strikes."[222] She recommended that both men and women be enrolled in unions, pointing out that had this been done, women typesetters would not have replaced men at lower wages in the recent strike of printers on the New York _World_. Finally a resolution was adopted, making it clear that Mrs. Stanton's acceptance in no way committed the National Labor Congress to her "peculiar ideas" or to "Female Suffrage."

A committee on female labor was then appointed with Susan as one of its members. At once she tried to show the committee how the vote would help women in their struggle for higher wages. She had at hand a perfect example in the unsuccessful strike of Kate Mullaney's strong, well-organized union of 500 collar laundry workers in Troy, New York. Aware that Kate blamed their defeat on the ruthless newspaper campaign, inspired and paid for by employers, Susan asked her, "If you had been 500 carpenters or 500 masons, do you not think you would have succeeded?"[223]

"Certainly," Kate Mullaney replied, adding that the striking bricklayers had won everything they demanded. Susan then reminded her that because the bricklayers were voters, newspapers respected them and would hesitate to arouse their displeasure, realizing that in the next election they would need the votes of all union men for their candidates. "If you collar women had been voters," she told them, "you too would have held the balance of political power in that little city of Troy."

Susan convinced the committee on female labor, and in their strong report to the convention they urged women "to secure the ballot" as well as "to learn the trades, engage in business, join labor unions or form protective unions of their own, ... and use every other honorable means to persuade or force employers to do justice to women by paying them equal wages for equal work." These women also called upon the National Labor Congress to aid the organization of women's unions, to demand the eight-hour day for women as well as men, and to ask Congress and state legislatures to pass laws providing equal pay for women in government employ. The phrase, "to secure the ballot," was quickly challenged by some of the men and had to be deleted before the report was accepted; but this setback was as nothing to Susan in comparison with the friends she had made for woman suffrage among prominent labor leaders and with the fact that a woman, Kate Mullaney of Troy, had been chosen assistant secretary of the National Labor Union and its national organizer of women.[224]

The National Labor Union Congress won high praise in _The Revolution_ as laying the foundation of the new political party of America which would be triumphant in 1872. "The producers, the working-men, the women, the Negroes," _The Revolution_ declared, "are destined to form a triple power that shall speedily wrest the sceptre of government from the non-producers, the land monopolists, the bondholders, and the politicians."[225]

* * * * *

One of the most encouraging signs at this time was the friendliness of the New York _World_, whose reporters covered the meetings of the Workingwomen's Association with sympathy, arousing much local interest. Reprinting these reports and supplementing them, _The Revolution_ carried their import farther afield, bringing to the attention of many the wisdom and justice of equal pay for equal work, and the need to organize workingwomen and to provide training and trade schools for them. _The Revolution_ continually spurred women on to improve themselves, to learn new skills, and actually to do equal work if they expected equal pay.

When reports reached Susan that women in the printing trade were afraid of manual labor, of getting their hands and fingers dirty, and of lifting heavy galleys, she quickly let them know that she had no patience with this. "Those who stay at home," she told them, "have to wash kettles and lift wash tubs and black stoves until their hands are blackened and hardened. In this spirit, you must go to work on your cases of type. Are these cases heavier than a wash tub filled with water and clothes, or the old cheese tubs?... The trouble is either that girls are not educated to have physical strength or else they do not like to use it. If a union of women is to succeed, it must be composed of strength, nerve, courage, and persistence, with no fear of dirtying their white fingers, but with a determination that when they go into an office they would go through all that was required of them and demand just as high wages as the men....

"Make up your mind," she continued, "to take the 'lean' with the 'fat,' and be early and late at the case precisely as the men are. I do not demand equal pay for any women save those who do equal work in value. Scorn to be coddled by your employers; make them understand that you are in their service as workers, not as women."[226]

Workingwomen's associations now existed in Boston, St. Louis, Chicago, San Francisco and other cities, encouraged and aroused by the efforts at organization in New York. These associations occasionally exchanged ideas, and news of all of them was published in _The Revolution_. The groups in Boston and in the outlying textile mills were particularly

## active, and Susan brought to her next suffrage convention in

Washington in 1870 Jennie Collins of Lowell who was ably leading a strike against a cut in wages. The newspapers, too, began to notice workingwomen, publishing articles about their working and living conditions.

Trying to amalgamate the various groups in New York, Susan now formed a Workingwomen's Central Association, of which she was elected president. To its meetings she brought interesting speakers and practical reports on wages, hours, and working conditions. She herself picked up a great deal of useful information in her daily round as she talked with this one and that one. On her walks to and from work, in all kinds of weather, she met poorly clad women carrying sacks and baskets in which they collected rags, scraps of paper, bones, old shoes, and anything worth rescuing from "garbage boxes." With friendliness and good cheer, she greeted these ragpickers, sometimes stopping to talk with them about their work, and through her interest brought several into the Workingwomen's Association. Looking forward to surveys on all women's occupations, she started out by appointing a committee to investigate the ragpickers, many of whom lived in tumbledown slab shanties on the rocky land which is now a part of Central Park.