Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
"'A square deal for every man.' These words of President
Roosevelt were more discussed during our last presidential
campaign than was any party platform plank. The growing
prominence of the doctrine of a square deal is of vital
significance to us who stand for equal suffrage, as we ask only
for this. It has been invoked chiefly against 'trusts.' We invoke
the doctrine of a square deal against the greatest 'trust' in the
world--the political trust--which is the most absolute monopoly
because entrenched in law itself and because it is a monopoly of
the greatest thing in the world, of liberty itself. The exclusion
of women from participation in governmental affairs means the
going to waste of a vast force, which, if utilized, would be a
great power in the advance of civilization.... But there depends
on the success of the equal suffrage movement something more
valuable even than national prosperity and that is the
preservation of human liberty. Now, as in 1860, 'the nation
cannot remain half slave and half free,' and either women must be
made free or men will lose the liberty which they enjoy."
Sunday services were conducted at 4:30 in the First Congregational
church by the Rev. Eleanor Gordon, pastor of the First Unitarian
church of Des Moines, Ia., assisted by Dr. Shaw and the Rev. Eliza
Tupper Wilkes of Los Angeles, with a special musical program. Miss
Gordon had filled the Unitarian pulpit in the morning, giving an
eloquent sermon on Revelations of God. Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman
had preached in the Congregational church in the morning and the Rev.
Mrs. Blackwell in the evening. Miss Laura Clay gave a Bible reading
and exposition in the Taylor Street Methodist Episcopal church in the
evening. The Rev. J. Whitcomb Brougher, pastor of the White Temple,
the large Baptist church, invited Miss Anthony to occupy its pulpit
and expound "any doctrine she had at heart." The _Oregonian_ said:
"She took him at his word and got in some of the best words for
suffrage that have been put before the Portland public. There was such
enthusiasm over the venerable founder and leader of the suffrage
movement that when she appeared on the rostrum the applause was as
vigorous as though it had not been Sunday and the place a church.
There was not room in the big Temple for another person to squeeze
past the doors." The papers quoted liberally from the sermons of all
and the Portland _Journal_ said: "Each preached to a congregation that
taxed the capacity of the church.... The welcome accorded the women
by the Portland pastors was sharply in contrast with the hostility
shown by the clergy when equal suffrage conventions began in the
middle of the last century.[40]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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