Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
An animated discussion took place, many of the delegates asking
sympathetic questions. Mrs. Ella S. Stewart (Ill.) followed with a
delightfully caustic address on Some Fallacies; Our Privileges. The
reporters were so carried away by her "sweetness and beauty" that they
almost forgot to make notes of her speech, of which one of them said:
"She picked up Grover Cleveland, Lyman Abbott and other
anti-suffragists from the time of Samuel Johnson and figuratively spun
them around her finger, to the joy of the audience." In paying her
tribute to chivalry she said: "Of what benefit was the chivalry of the
knights toward their ladies of high degree to the thousands of peasant
women and wives of serfs hitched up with animals and working in the
fields? Of no more value now is the protection given to the wives and
daughters of the rich by men who are grinding down and taking
advantage of those of the poor. In Chicago women have no vote except
once in four years for a trustee of the State university, yet every
day if we try to take a street car we are overrun and trampled down by
men who get on the cars before they stop, and when we finally limp in
we see them comfortably seated reading the papers while we dangle from
the straps. We are crowded in stores and smoked in restaurants; in
fact the only place of late where I was not crowded was at the polls
when I went to cast my vote!"
Mrs. Mary E. Craigie (N. Y.) closed the session with a serious,
impressive address on Our Real Opposition; Ignorance and Vice, the
Silent Foe. She pointed out the "indirect alliance between the
anti-suffragists and the vicious elements, opponents of all reform,
fearful that if women vote good will prevail over evil." "The chief
foes of woman suffrage," she said, "are the saloon keepers, scum of
society, barred from fraternal organizations, social clubs and even
from some of the insurance societies."
The Biography of Miss Anthony contains this paragraph.[45]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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