Part 29

Disappointed and heartsick over the turn of events, Susan searched for a way to re-establish harmony and her own faith in her successor. Realizing that a mother's cool counsel and guiding hand were needed to heal the misunderstandings, and convinced that unity and trust could be restored only by frank discussion of the problem by those involved, she asked for a meeting of the business committee at her home. "What can we do to get back into trust in each other?" she wrote Laura Clay. "That is the thing we must do--somehow--and it cannot be done by letter. We must hold a meeting--and we must have you--and every single one of our members at it."[432]

Impatient at what to her seemed unnecessary delay, she kept prodding Mrs. Catt to call this meeting. Fortunately both Susan and Mrs. Catt were genuinely fond of each other and placed the welfare of the cause above personal differences. Both were tolerant and steady and understood the pressures put on the leader of a great organization. Anxious and troubled as she waited for this meeting, Susan appreciated Anna Shaw's visits as never before, marking them as red-letter days on her calender.

Late in August 1900, all the officers finally gathered at 17 Madison Street, and Susan listened to their discussions with deep concern. She was confident she could rely completely on Harriet Upton, Rachel, and Anna and could count on Laura Clay's "level head and good common sense."[433] She never felt sure of Alice Stone Blackwell and knew there was great sympathy and often a working alliance between her, her father, and Mrs. Catt. Of the latest member of the official family, Catharine Waugh McCulloch, she had little first-hand knowledge. Mrs. Catt, whom she longed to fathom and trust, was still an enigma. During those hot humid August days, misunderstandings were healed, unity was restored, and Susan was reassured that not a single one of her "girls" desired "other than was good for the work."[434]

* * * * *

Susan had always been a champion of coeducation, speaking for it as early as the 1850s at state teachers' meetings and proposing it for Columbia University in her _Revolution_. In 1891, she and Mrs. Stanton had agitated for the admission of women to the University of Rochester. Seven years later the trustees consented to admit women provided $100,000 could be raised in a year, and Susan served on the fund-raising committee with her friend, Helen Barrett Montgomery. Because the alumni of the University of Rochester opposed coeducation and the city's wealthiest men were indifferent, progress was slow, but the trustees were persuaded to extend the time and to reduce by one half the amount to be raised.

With so much else on her mind in 1900, including the sudden death of her brother Merritt, she had given the fund little thought until the committee appealed to her in desperation when only one day remained in which to raise the last $8,000. Immediately she went into action. Remembering that Mary had talked of willing the University $2,000 if it became coeducational, she persuaded her to pledge that amount now. Then setting out in a carriage on a very hot September morning, she slowly collected pledges for all but $2,000. As the trustees were in session and likely to adjourn any minute, she appealed to Samuel Wilder, one of Rochester's prominent elder citizens who had already contributed, to guarantee that amount until she could raise it. To this he gladly agreed. Reaching the trustees' meeting with Mrs. Montgomery just in time, with pledges assuring the payment of the full $50,000, she was amazed at their reception. Instead of rejoicing with them, the trustees began to quibble over Samuel Wilder's guarantee of the last $2,000 because of the state of his health. When she offered her life insurance as security, they still put her off, telling her to come back in a few days. Even then they continued to quibble, but finally admitted that the women had won. Disillusioned, she wrote in her diary, "Not a trustee has given anything although there are several millionaires among them."[435] Only her life insurance policy and her dogged persistence had saved the day.

This effort to open Rochester University to women, on top of a very full and worrisome year, was so taxing and so disillusioning that she became seriously ill. When she recovered sufficiently for a drive, she asked to be taken to the university campus and afterward wrote in her diary, "As I drove over the campus, I felt 'these are not forbidden grounds to the girls of the city any longer.' It is good to feel that the old doors sway on their hinges--to women! Will the vows be kept to them--will the girls have equal chances with the boys? They promised well--the fulfilment will be seen--whether there shall not be some hitch from the proposed to a separate school."[436]

* * * * *

Still keeping her watchful eye on the National American Association, Susan traveled to Minneapolis in the spring of 1901 for the first annual convention under the new administration. There was talk of an "entire new deal," the retirement of all who had served under Miss Anthony, and the election of a "new cabinet of officers," and Susan was so concerned that there might also be a change in the presidency that she felt she must be on hand to guide and steady the proceedings.[437]

Mrs. Catt was re-elected and Susan returned to Rochester well satisfied and ready to devote herself to completing the fourth volume of the _History of Woman Suffrage_ on which she and Mrs. Harper had been working intermittently for the past year. It was published late in 1902. While working on the History, Susan, although more than satisfied with Mrs. Harper's work, often thought nostalgically of her happy stimulating years of collaboration with Mrs. Stanton. She seldom saw Mrs. Stanton now, but they kept in touch with each other by letter.

In the spring of 1902, she visited Mrs. Stanton twice in New York, and planned to return in November to celebrate Mrs. Stanton's eighty-seventh birthday. In anticipation, she wrote Mrs. Stanton, "It is fifty-one years since we first met and we have been busy through every one of them, stirring up the world to recognize the rights of women.... We little dreamed when we began this contest ... that half a century later we would be compelled to leave the finish of the battle to another generation of women. But our hearts are filled with joy to know that they enter upon this task equipped with a college education, with business experience, with the freely admitted right to speak in public--all of which were denied to women fifty years ago.... These strong, courageous, capable, young women will take our place and complete our work. There is an army of them where we were but a handful...."[438]

Two weeks before Mrs. Stanton's birthday, Susan was stunned by a telegram announcing that her old comrade had passed away in her chair. Bewildered and desolate, she sat alone in her study for several hours, trying bravely to endure her grief. Then came the reporters for copy which only this heartbroken woman could give. "I cannot express myself at all as I feel," she haltingly told them. "I am too crushed to speak. If I had died first, she would have found beautiful phrases to describe our friendship, but I cannot put it into words."[439]

From New York, where she had gone for the funeral, she wrote in anguish to Mrs. Harper, "Oh, the voice is stilled which I have loved to hear for fifty years. Always I have felt that I must have Mrs. Stanton's opinion of things before I knew where I stood myself. I am all at sea--but the Laws of Nature are still going on--with no shadow or turning--what a wonder it is--it goes right on and on--no matter who lives or who dies."[440]

* * * * *

National woman suffrage conventions were still red-letter events to Susan and she attended them no matter how great the physical effort, traveling to New Orleans in 1903. Of particular concern was the 1904 convention because of Mrs. Catt's decision at the very last moment not to stand for re-election on account of her health. Looking over the field, Susan saw no one capable of taking her place but Anna Howard Shaw. Not to be able to turn to Mrs. Stanton's capable daughter, Harriot Stanton Blatch, at this time was disappointing, but Harriot's long absence in England had made her more or less of a stranger to the membership of the National American Association, and for some reason she did not seem to fit in, lacking her mother's warmth and appeal.[441]

[Illustration: Quotation in the handwriting of Susan B. Anthony]

"I don't see anybody in the whole rank of our suffrage movement to take her [Mrs. Catt's] place but you," Susan now wrote Anna Howard Shaw. "If you will take it with a salary of say, $2,000, I will go ahead and try to see what I can do. We must not let the society down into _feeble_ hands.... Don't say _no_, for the _life_ of _you_, for if Mrs. Catt _persists_ in going out, we shall simply _have_ to _accept it_ and we must _tide over_ with the _best material_ that we have, and _you are the best_, and would you have taken office _four years ago_, you would have been elected over-whelmingly."[442]

Anna could not refuse Aunt Susan, and when she was elected with Mrs. Catt as vice-president, Susan breathed freely again.

It warmed Susan's heart to enter the convention on her eighty-fourth birthday to a thundering welcome, to banter with Mrs. Upton who called her to the platform, and to stop the applause with a smile and "There now, girls, that's enough."[443] Nothing could have been more appropriate for her birthday than the Colorado jubilee over which she presided and which gave irrefutable evidence of the success of woman suffrage in that state. There was rejoicing too over Australia, where women had been voting since 1902 and over the new hope in Europe, in Denmark, where women had chosen her birthday to stage a demonstration in favor of the pending franchise bill.

For the last time, she spoke to a Senate committee on the woman suffrage amendment. Standing before these indifferent men, a tired warrior at the end of a long hard campaign, she reminded them that she alone remained of those who thirty-five years before, in 1869, had appealed to Congress for justice. "And I," she added, "shall not be able to come much longer.

"We have waited," she told them. "We stood aside for the Negro; we waited for the millions of immigrants; now we must wait till the Hawaiians, the Filipinos, and the Puerto Ricans are enfranchised; then no doubt the Cubans will have their turn. For all these ignorant, alien peoples, educated women have been compelled to stand aside and wait!" Then with mounting impatience, she asked them, "How long will this injustice, this outrage continue?"[444]

Their answer to her was silence. They sent no report to the Senate on the woman suffrage amendment. Yet she was able to say to a reporter of the New York _Sun_, "I have never lost my faith, not for a moment in fifty years."[445]

FOOTNOTES:

[422] Rachel Foster Avery, Ed., _National Council of Women_, 1891 (Philadelphia, 1891), p. 229.

[423] Dec. 1, 1898, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library. Mrs. Elnora Babcock of New York was in charge of the press bureau.

[424] Miss Anthony was enrolled as a member of the Knights of Labor and invited this organization to send delegates to the International Council of Women in 1888.

[425] To Ellen Wright Garrison, 1900, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.

[426] Harper, _Anthony_, III, p. 1137. A few years later, militant suffragists, led by Emmeline Pankhurst, were active in London. Mrs. Pankhurst heard Miss Anthony speak in Manchester in 1904.

[427] Ida Husted Harper Ms., Catharine Waugh McCulloch Papers, Radcliffe Women's Archives.

[428] Nov. 20, 1899, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library.

[429] _History of Woman Suffrage_, IV, p. 385. Miss Anthony was "moved up," as she expressed it, to Honorary President.

[430] Peck, Catt, p. 107, Washington _Post_ quotation.

[431] To Laura Clay, April 15, 1900, University of Kentucky Library, Lexington, Kentucky.

[432] _Ibid._, March 15, 1900.

[433] _Ibid._

[434] _Ibid._, Sept. 7, 1900.

[435] Ms., Diary, Nov. 10, 1900.

[436] _Ibid._, Sept. 26, 1900. A separate woman's college was established at the University of Rochester and not until 1952 were the men's and women's colleges merged.

[437] May 20, 1901, Note, Susan B. Anthony Memorial Collection, Rochester, New York.

[438] _History of Woman Suffrage_, V, pp. 741-742.

[439] Harper, _Anthony_, III, p. 1263.

[440] Oct. 28, 1902, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library.

[441] Oct. 27, 1904, Elizabeth Smith Miller Collection, New York Public Library. A few years later, Mrs. Blatch made a vital contribution to the cause through the Women's Political Union which she organized and which brought more militant methods and new life into the woman suffrage campaign in New York State.

[442] Jan. 27, 1904, Lucy E. Anthony Collection. Mrs. Blake who had been a candidate in 1900 had by this time formed her own organization, the National Legislative League.

[443] _History of Woman Suffrage_, V, p. 99.

[444] Harper, _Anthony_, III, p. 1308.

[445] _Ibid._

SUSAN B. ANTHONY OF THE WORLD

Susan was on the ocean in May 1904 with her sister Mary and a group of good friends, headed for a meeting of the International Council of Women in Berlin. What drew her to Berlin was the plan initiated by Carrie Chapman Catt to form an International Woman Suffrage Alliance prior to the meetings of the International Council. This had been Susan's dream and Mrs. Stanton's in 1883, when they first conferred with women of other countries regarding an international woman suffrage organization and found only the women of England ready to unite on such a radical program. Now that women had worked together successfully in the International Council for sixteen years on other less controversial matters relating to women, she and Mrs. Catt were confident that a few of them at least were willing to unite to demand the vote.

Chosen as a matter of course to preside over this gathering of suffragists in Berlin, Susan received an enthusiastic welcome. For her it was a momentous occasion, and eager to spread news of the meeting far and wide, she could not understand the objections of many of the delegates to the presence of reporters who they feared might send out sensational copy.

"My friends, what are we here for?" she asked her more timid colleagues. "We have come from many countries, travelled thousands of miles to form an organization for a great international work, and do we want to keep it a secret from the public? No; welcome all reporters who want to come, the more, the better. Let all we say and do here be told far and wide. Let the people everywhere know that in Berlin women from all parts of the world have banded themselves together to demand political freedom. I rejoice in the presence of these reporters, and instead of excluding them from our meetings let us help them to all the information we can and ask them to give it the widest publicity."[446]

This won the battle for the reporters, who gave her rousing applause, and the news flashed over the wires was sympathetic, dignified, and abundant. It told the world of the formation of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance by women from the United States, Great Britain, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, Australia, Norway, and Denmark, "to secure the enfranchisement of women of all nations." It praised the honorary president, Susan B. Anthony, and the American women who took over the leadership of this international venture, Carrie Chapman Catt, the president, and Rachel Foster Avery, corresponding secretary.

To celebrate the occasion, German suffragists called a public mass meeting, and Susan, eager to rejoice with them, was surprised to find members of the International Council disgruntled and accusing the International Woman Suffrage Alliance of stealing their thunder and casting the dark shadow of woman suffrage over their conference. To placate them and restore harmony, she stayed away from this public meeting, but she could not control the demand for her presence.

"Where is Susan B. Anthony?" were the first words spoken as the mass meeting opened. Then immediately the audience rose and burst into cheers which continued without a break for ten minutes. Anna Howard Shaw there on the platform and deeply moved by this tribute to Aunt Susan, later described how she felt: "Every second of that time I seemed to see Miss Anthony alone in her hotel room, longing with all her big heart to be with us, as we longed to have her.... Afterwards, when we burst in upon her and told her of the great demonstration, the mere mention of her name had caused, her lips quivered and her brave old eyes filled with tears."[447]

The next morning her "girls" brought her the Berlin newspapers, translating for her the report of the meeting and these heart-warming lines, "The Americans call her 'Aunt Susan.' She is our 'Aunt Susan' too."

This was but a foretaste of her reception throughout her stay in Berlin. To the International Council, she was "Susan B. Anthony of the World," the woman of the hour, whom all wanted to meet. Every time she entered the conference hall, the audience rose and remained standing until she was seated. Every mention of her name brought forth cheers. The many young women, acting as ushers, were devoted to her and eager to serve her. They greeted her by kissing her hand. Embarrassed at first by such homage, she soon responded by kissing them on the cheek.

[Illustration: Susan B. Anthony at the age of eighty-five]

The Empress Victoria Augusta, receiving the delegates in the Royal Palace, singled out Susan, and instead of following the custom of kissing the Empress's hand, Susan bowed as she would to any distinguished American, explaining that she was a Quaker and did not understand the etiquette of the court. The Empress praised Susan's great work, and unwilling to let such an opportunity slip by, Susan offered the suggestion that Emperor William who had done so much to build up his country might now wish to raise the status of German women. To this the Empress replied with a smile, "The gentlemen are very slow to comprehend this great movement."[448]

When the talented Negro, Mary Church Terrell, addressing the International Council in both German and French, received an ovation, Susan's cup of joy was filled to the brim, for she glimpsed the bright promise of a world without barriers of sex or race.

* * * * *

The newspapers welcomed her home, and in her own comfortable sitting room she read Rochester's greeting in the _Democrat and Chronicle_, "There are woman suffragists and anti-suffragists, but all Rochester people, irrespective of opinion ... are Anthony men and women. We admire and esteem one so single-minded, earnest and unselfish, who, with eighty-four years to her credit, is still too busy and useful to think of growing old."[449]

Her happiness over this welcome was clouded, however, by the serious illness of her brother Daniel, and she and Mary hurried to Kansas to see him. Two months later he passed away. Now only she and Mary were left of all the large Anthony family. Without Daniel, the world seemed empty. His strength of character, independence, and sympathy with her work had comforted and encouraged her all through her life. A fearless editor, a successful businessman, a politician with principles, he had played an important role in Kansas, and proud of him, she cherished the many tributes published throughout the country.

Courageously she now picked up the threads of her life. Her precious National American Woman Suffrage Association was out of her hands, but she still had the _History of Woman Suffrage_ to distribute, and it gave her a great sense of accomplishment to hand on to future generations this record of women's struggle for freedom.[450]

Missing the stimulous of work with her "girls," she took more and more pleasure in the company of William and Mary Gannett of the First Unitarian Church, whose liberal views appealed to her strongly. She liked to have young people about her and followed the lives of all her nieces and nephews with the greatest interest, spurring on their ambitions and helping finance their education. The frequent visits of "Niece Lucy" were a great joy during these years, as was the nearness of "Niece Anna O,"[451] who married and settled in Rochester. The young Canadian girl, Anna Dann, had become almost indispensable to her and to Mary, as companion, secretary, and nurse, and her marriage left a void in the household. Anna Dann was married at 17 Madison Street by Anna Howard Shaw with Susan beaming upon her like a proud grandmother.

* * * * *

Longing to see one more state won for suffrage, Susan carefully followed the news from the field, looking hopefully to California and urging her "girls" to keep hammering away there in spite of defeats. Her eyes were also on the Territory of Oklahoma, where a constitution was being drafted preparatory to statehood. "The present bill for the new state," she wrote Anna Howard Shaw, in December 1904, "is an insult to women of Oklahoma, such as has never been perpetrated before. We have always known that women were in reality ranked with idiots and criminals, but it has never been said in words that the state should ... restrict or abridge the suffrage ... on account of illiteracy, minority, _sex_, conviction of felony, mental condition, etc.... We must fight this bill to the utmost...."[452]

The brightest spot in the West was Oregon, where suffrage had been defeated in 1900 by only 2,000 votes. In June 1905, when the National American Association held its first far western convention in Portland during the Lewis and Clark Exposition, Susan could not keep away, although she had never expected to go over the mountains again. As she traveled to Portland with Mary and a hundred or more delegates in special cars, she recalled her many long tiring trips through the West to carry the message of woman suffrage to the frontier. In comparison, this was a triumphal journey, showing her, as nothing else could, what her work had accomplished. Greeted at railroad stations along the way by enthusiastic crowds, showered with flowers and gifts, she stood on the back platform of the train with her "girls," shaking hands, waving her handkerchief, and making an occasional speech.

Presiding over the opening session of the Portland convention, standing in a veritable garden of flowers which had been presented to her, she remarked with a droll smile, "This is rather different from the receptions I used to get fifty years ago.... I am thankful for this change of spirit which has come over the American people."[453]