Part 28

More and more disturbed by the inefficient care of the wounded and the feeding of enlisted men, she wrote Rachel, "Every day's reports and comments about the war only show the need of women at the front--not as employees permitted to be there because they begged to be--but there by right--as managers and dictators in all departments in which women have been trained--those of feeding and caring for in health and nursing the sick."[417]

The war over, the problem of governing the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii was of great interest to her, and she at once asked for the enfranchisement of the women of these newly won island possessions. She regarded it as an outrage for the most democratic nation in the world to foist upon them an exclusively masculine government, a "male oligarchy," as she called it. "I really believe I shall explode," she wrote Clara Colby, "if some of you young women don't wake up and raise your voice in protest.... I wonder if when I am under the sod--or cremated and floating in the air--I shall have to stir you and others up. How can you not be all on fire?"[418]

The unwillingness of her "girls" to relate woman suffrage to contemporary public affairs such as this, repeatedly disappointed her. Yet she was well aware that the younger generation would never see the work through her eyes, or exactly follow her pattern.

* * * * *

Disappointed that her National American Woman Suffrage Association did not attract members as did the W.C.T.U. or the General Federation of Women's Clubs, she confessed to Clara Colby, "It is the disheartening part of my life that so very few women will work for the emancipation of their own half of the race."[419] Watching women flock into these other organizations and contributing to all sorts of charities, she was obliged to admit that "very few are capable of seeing that the cause of nine-tenths of all the misfortunes which come to women, and to men also, lies in the subjection of women, and therefore the important thing is to lay the ax at the root."[420]

She also discovered that it was one thing to build up a large organization and another to keep women so busy with pressing work for the cause that they did not find time to expend their energies on the mechanics of organization. Not only did she chafe at the red tape most of them spun, but she often felt that they were too prone to linger in academic by-ways, listening to speeches and holding pleasant conventions. Since the California campaign of 1896, only one state, Washington, had been roused to vote on a woman suffrage amendment, which was defeated and only one more state Delaware had granted women the right to vote for members of school boards.

Again and again she warned her "girls" that some kind of action on woman suffrage by Congress every year was important. A hearing, a committee report, a debate, or even an unfavorable vote would, she was convinced, do more to stir up the whole nation than all the speakers and organizers that could be sent through the country.

Such thoughts as these, relative to the work which was always on her mind, she dashed off to one after another of her young colleagues. "Your letters sound like a trumpet blast," wrote Anna Howard Shaw, grateful for her counsel. "They read like St. Paul's Epistles to the Romans, so strong, so clear, so full of courage."[421]

At seventy-eight, Susan realized that the time was approaching when she must make up her mind to turn over to a younger woman the presidency of the National American Association, and during the summer of 1898 she announced to her executive committee that she would retire on her eightieth birthday in 1900.

FOOTNOTES:

[400] Ms., Diary, Nov. 7, 1895

[401] Mary Gray Peck, _Carrie Chapman Catt_ (New York, 1944), p. 84.

[402] Ms., Diary, Nov. 27, 1895.

[403] To Mrs. Upton, Sept. 5, 1890, University of Rochester Library, Rochester, New York.

[404] Feb. 10, 1894, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library.

[405] Harper, _Anthony_, III, p. 1113.

[406] Miss Anthony's first attempt to win Southern women to suffrage was at the time of the New Orleans Exposition in 1885. Because of her reputation as an abolitionist, she had much resistance to overcome in the South.

[407] Dec. 18, 1895, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library.

[408] _Woman's Tribune_, Feb. 1, 1896.

[409] _History of Woman Suffrage_, IV, p. 264.

[410] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 855. The action of the National American Woman Suffrage Association on the Woman's Bible was never reversed.

[411] _Ibid._, p. 856.

[412] Susan thought seriously of Clara Colby as a collaborator but concluded she was too involved with the _Woman's Tribune_. Susan agreed to share royalties with Mrs. Harper on the biography and any other work on which they might collaborate. On her 75th birthday Susan's girls had presented her with an annuity of $800 a year. This made it possible for her to give up lecturing and concentrate on her book.

[413] Genevieve Hawley left an interesting record of these years in letters to her aunt, many of which are preserved in the Susan B. Anthony Memorial Collection in Rochester, New York.

[414] Both the New York _Herald_ and Chicago _Inter-Ocean_ gave the book full-page reviews. A third volume was published in 1908.

[415] Aug. 10, 1898, Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress.

[416] Harper, _Anthony_, III, p. 1121.

[417] Aug. 10, 1898, Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress.

[418] Dec. 17, 1898, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library. Clara Colby, making her headquarters in Washington, kept Susan informed on developments and they carried on an animated, voluminous correspondence during these years.

[419] March 12, 1894, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library.

[420] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 920.

[421] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 924.

PASSING ON THE TORCH

The last year of Susan's presidency was particularly precious to her. In a sense it represented her farewell to the work she had carried on most of her life, and at the same time it was also the hopeful beginning of the period leading to victory. Yet she had no illusion of speedy or easy success for her "girls" and she did her best to prepare them for the obstacles they would inevitably meet. She warned them not to expect their cause to triumph merely because it was just. "Governments," she told them, "never do any great good things from mere principle, from mere love of justice.... You expect too much of human nature when you expect that."[422]

The movement had reached an impasse. The temper of Congress, as shown by the admission of Hawaii as a territory without woman suffrage, was both indifferent and hostile. That this attitude did not express the will of the American people, she was firmly convinced. It was due, she believed, to the political influence of powerful groups opposed to woman suffrage--the liquor interests controlling the votes of increasing numbers of immigrants, machine politicians fearful of losing their power, and financial interests whose conservatism resisted any measure which might upset the status quo. How to undermine this opposition was now her main problem, and she saw no other way but persistent agitation through a more active, more effective, ever-growing woman suffrage organization, reaching a wider cross section of the people. She herself had established a press bureau which was feeding interesting factual articles on woman suffrage to newspapers throughout the country, for as she wrote Mrs. Colby, the suffrage cause "needs to picture its demands in the daily papers where the unconverted can see them rather than in special papers where only those already converted can see them."[423]

Of greatest importance to her was winning the support of organized labor. Samuel Gompers, the president of the American Federation of Labor, had already shown his friendliness toward equal pay and votes for women and was putting women organizers in the field to speed the unionization of women. Even so she was surprised at the enthusiasm with which she was received at the American Federation of Labor convention in 1899, when the four hundred delegates by a rising vote adopted a strong resolution urging favorable action on a federal woman suffrage amendment.

So far as possible she had always established friendly relations with labor organizations, first in 1869 with William H. Sylvis's National Labor Union and then with the Knights of Labor and their leader, Terrence V. Powderly.[424] When Eugene V. Debs, president of the American Railway Union, was arrested during the Pullman strike in 1894 for defying a court injunction, she did not rate him, as so many did, a dangerous radical, but as an earnest reformer, crusading for an unpopular cause. They had met years before in Terre Haute, where at his request she had lectured on woman suffrage, and immediately they had won each other's sympathy and respect. She did not see indications of anarchy in the Pullman and Homestead strikes or in the Haymarket riot, but regarded them as an unfortunate phase of an industrial revolution which in time would improve the relations of labor and capital.

That women would be effected by this industrial revolution was obvious to her, and she wanted them to understand it and play their part in it. For this reason she saw the importance of keeping the National American Woman Suffrage Association informed on all developments affecting wage-earning women and to her delight she found three young suffragists wide awake on this subject. One of them, Florence Kelley, had joined forces with that remarkable young woman, Jane Addams, in her valuable social experiment, Hull House, in the slums of Chicago, and was now devoting herself to improving the working conditions of women and children. She represented a new trend in thought and work--social service--which made a great appeal to college women and set in motion labor legislation designed to protect women and children. Another young woman of promise, Gail Laughlin, pioneering as a lawyer, approached the subject from the feminist viewpoint, seeking protection for women not through labor legislation based on sex, but through trade unions, the vote, equal pay, and a wider recognition of women's right to contract for their labor on the same terms as men. Her survey of women's working conditions, presented at a convention of the National American Association was so valuable and attracted so much attention that she was appointed to the United States Labor Commission. Harriot Stanton Blatch also understood the significance of the industrial revolution and woman's part in it, and she too opposed labor legislation based on sex. Coming from England occasionally to visit her mother in New York, she brought her liberal viewpoint into woman suffrage conventions with a flare of oratory matching that of her gifted parents. "The more I see of her," Susan remarked to a friend, "the more I feel the greatness of her character."[425]

* * * * *

Although it was Susan's intention to hew to the line of woman suffrage and not to comment publicly on controversial issues, she could not keep silent when confronted with injustice. Religious intolerance, bigotry, and racial discrimination always forced her to take a stand, regardless of the criticism she might bring on herself.

The treatment of the Negro in both the North and the South was always of great concern to her, and during the 1890s, when a veritable epidemic of lynchings and race riots broke out, she expressed herself freely in Rochester newspapers. She noted the dangerous trend as indicated by new anti-Negro societies and the limitation of membership to white Americans in the Spanish-American War veterans' organization. Whenever the opportunity presented itself, she put into practice her own sincere belief in race equality. During every Washington convention, she arranged to have one of her good speakers occupy the pulpit of a Negro church, and in the South she made it a point to speak herself in Negro churches and schools and before their organizations, even though this might prejudice southerners. In her own home, she gladly welcomed the Negro lecturers and educators who came to Rochester. This seeking out of the Negro in friendliness was a religious duty to her and a pleasure. She demanded of everyone employed in her household, respectful treatment of Negro guests. She rejoiced when she saw Negroes in the audience at woman suffrage conventions in Washington, and it gave her great satisfaction to hear Mary Church Terrell, a beautiful intelligent Negro who had been educated at Oberlin and in Europe, making speeches which equaled and even surpassed those of the most eloquent white suffragists.

* * * * *

Susan did not fail to keep in touch with the international feminist movement, and in the summer of 1899, when she was seventy-nine years old, she headed the United States delegation to the International Council of Women, meeting in London. Visiting Harriot Stanton Blatch at her home in Basingstoke, she first conferred with the leading British feminists, bringing herself up to date on the progress of their cause. In England as in the United States, the burden of the suffrage campaign had shifted from the shoulders of the pioneers to their daughters, and they were carrying on with vigor, pressing for the passage of a franchise bill in the House of Commons.

Moving on to London, she was acclaimed as she had been at the World's Fair in Chicago. "The papers here have been going wild over Miss Anthony, declaring her to be the most unaggressive woman suffragist ever seen," reported a journalist to his newspaper in the United States.

From China, India, New Zealand, and Australia, from South Africa, Palestine, Persia, and the Argentine, as well as from Europe and the United States, women had come to London to discuss their progress and their problems, and Susan, pointing out to them the goal toward which they must head, declared with confidence, "The day will come when man will recognize woman as his peer, not only at the fireside but in the councils of the nation. Then, and not until then, will there be the perfect comradeship ... between the sexes that shall result in the highest development of the race."[426]

She had hoped that Queen Victoria would receive the delegates at Windsor Castle, thus indicating her approval of the International Council. She longed to talk with this woman who had ruled so long and so well. That a queen sat on the throne of England, this in itself was important to her and she wanted to express her gratitude, although she was well aware that the Queen had never used her influence for the improvement of laws relating to women. She had hoped to convince her of the need of votes for women, but Queen Victoria never gave her the opportunity. All that influential Englishwomen were able to arrange was the admission of the delegates to the courtyard of Windsor Castle to watch the Queen start on her drive and to tea in the banquet room without the Queen.

[Illustration: Carrie Chapman Catt]

* * * * *

Returning home late in August 1899, Susan began at once to make definite plans to turn over the presidency of the National American Woman Suffrage Association to a younger woman. Although she well knew that the choice of her successor was actually in the hands of the membership, it was her intention to do what she could within the bounds of democratic procedure to insure the best possible leadership. To fill the office, she turned instinctively to Anna Howard Shaw whom she loved more dearly as the years went by and whose selfless devotion to the cause she trusted implicitly. Yet Anna, in spite of her many qualifications, lacked a few which were exceptional in Carrie Chapman Catt--creative executive ability, diplomacy, a talent for working with people, directing them, and winning their devotion. With growing admiration, Susan had been watching Mrs. Catt's indefatigable work in the states where she had been building up active branches. Her flare for raising money was outstanding, and Susan realized, as few others did, the crying need of funds for the campaigns ahead. In addition Mrs. Catt had no personal financial worries, for her husband, successful in business, was sympathetic to her work. Anna, on the other hand, would have to support herself by lecturing and carry as well the burden of the presidency of a rapidly growing organization.

Anna made the decision for Susan. She urged the candidacy of Mrs. Catt, although her highest ambition had always been to succeed her beloved Aunt Susan. As she later confessed to Susan, this was a personal sacrifice which cost her many a heartache, but she "honestly felt that Mrs. Catt was better fitted ... as well as freer to go into an unpaid field."[427] Susan therefore approached Mrs. Catt through Rachel and Harriet Upton, and was relieved when she consented to stand for election.

Rumors of Susan's retirement aroused ambitions in Lillie Devereux Blake, who from the point of seniority and devoted work in New York was regarded as being next in line for the presidency by Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Colby. Unable to visualize Mrs. Blake as the leader of this large organization with its diverse strong personalities, Susan nevertheless conceded her right to compete for the office. Although she appreciated Mrs. Blake's valuable work for the cause, there never had been understanding or sympathy between them. Temperamentally the blunt stern New Englander with untiring drive had little in common with the southern beauty turned reformer.

A change in the presidency needed wise and patient handling as personal ambitions, prejudices, and misunderstandings reared their heads. When there were murmurings of secession among a small group if Mrs. Catt were elected, Susan wrote Mrs. Colby that such talk was "very immature, very despotic, very undemocratic," and she hoped she was not one of the malcontents.[428]

Another problem was the future of the organization committee which under Mrs. Catt's chairmanship had carried on a large part of the work. Its influence was considerable and could readily develop so as to conflict with that of the officers, thus threatening the unity of the whole organization. To dissolve the committee seemed to Susan and her closest advisors the wisest procedure. Mary Garrett Hay, who had worked closely with Mrs. Catt on the organization committee, opposed this plan, but after earnest discussion the officers, including Mrs. Catt, agreed to dissolve the organization committee.

* * * * *

As Susan appeared on the platform at the opening session of the Washington convention in February 1900, there was thunderous applause from an audience tense with emotion at the thought of losing the leader who had guided them for so many years. The tall gray-haired woman in black satin, with soft rich lace at her throat and the proverbial red shawl about her shoulders, had become the symbol of their cause. Now, as she looked down upon them with a friendly smile and motherly tenderness, tears came to their eyes, and they wanted to remember always just how she looked at that moment. Then she broke the tension with a call to duty, a summons to press for the federal amendment, and one more plea that they always hold their annual conventions in the national capital.

Difficult and sad as this official leave-taking was, she had made up her mind to carry if through with good cheer. Tirelessly she presided at three sessions daily. With the pride of a mother, she listened to the many reports and with particular satisfaction to that of the treasurer which showed all debts paid and pledges amounting to $10,000 to start the new year. Susan herself had made this possible, raising enough to pay past debts and securing pledges so that the new administration could start its work free from financial worries.

"I have fully determined to retire from the active presidency of the Association," she announced when the reports and speeches were over. "I am not retiring now because I feel unable, mentally or physically, to do the necessary work, but because I wish to see the organization in the hands of those who are to have its management in the future. I want to see you all at work, while I am alive, so I can scold if you do not do it well. Give the matter of selecting your officers serious thought. Consider who will do the best work for the political enfranchisement of women, and let no personal feelings enter into the question."[429]

Watching developments with the keen eye of a politician, she was confident that Mrs. Catt would be elected to succeed her, although Mrs. Blake's candidacy was still being assiduously pressed and circulars recommending her, signed by Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Russell Sage and Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, were being widely distributed. Just before the balloting, however, Mrs. Blake withdrew her name in the interest of harmony. This left the field to Mrs. Catt, who received 254 votes of the 278 cast.

A burst of applause greeted the announcement of Mrs. Catt's election. Then abruptly it stopped, as the realization swept over the delegates that Aunt Susan was no longer their president. Walking to the front of the platform, Susan took Mrs. Catt by the hand, and while the delegates applauded, the two women stood before them, the one showing in her kind face the experience and wisdom of years, the other young, intelligent, and beautiful, her life still before her. There were tears in Susan's eyes and her voice was unsteady as she said, "I am sure you have made a wise choice.... 'New conditions bring new duties.' These new duties, these changed conditions, demand stronger hands, younger heads, and fresher hearts. In Mrs. Catt, you have my ideal leader. I present to you my successor."[430]

* * * * *

Susan's joyous confidence in the new administration was rudely jolted as controversy over the future of the organization committee flared up during the last days of the convention. Under strong pressure from Mary Garrett Hay, Mrs. Catt had counseled with Henry Blackwell, and at one of the last sessions he had slipped in a motion authorizing the continuance of the organization committee.[431]

Stunned by this development and looking upon it as a threat to the harmony of the new administration, Susan, supported by Harriet Upton and Rachel, prepared to take action, and the next morning, at the first post-convention executive committee meeting at which Mrs. Catt presided, Susan proposed that the national officers, headed by Mrs. Catt, take over the duties of the organization committee. This precipitated a heated debate, during which Henry Blackwell and his daughter, Alice, called such procedure unconstitutional, and Mary Hay resigned. As the discussion became too acrimonious, Mrs. Catt put an end to it by calling up unfinished business, and thus managed to steer the remainder of the session into less troubled waters. The next day, however, Susan brought the matter up again, and on her motion the organization committee was voted out of existence with praise for its admirable record of service.

Here were all the makings of a factional feud which, if fanned into flame, could well have split the National American Association. Not only had the old organization interfered with the new, indirectly reprimanding Mrs. Catt, but Susan, by her own personal influence and determination, had reversed the action of the convention. As a result, Mrs. Catt was indignant, hurt, and sorely tempted to resign, but after sending a highly critical letter to every member of the business committee, she took up her work with vigor.