Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
Miss Gordon said that during the year Mrs. Catt had made a tour of
nine States and taken part in forty meetings. Referring to the efforts
made to have a woman suffrage clause put into new constitutions that
were being framed in several States she said: "The clause which lived
twenty-four hours in the Alabama Constitution, granting to taxpaying
women owning $500 worth of property the suffrage on questions of
bonded indebtedness, was killed by a disease peculiar to the genus
homo known as chivalry. In the case in point, the diagnosis revealed
that the fairest, purest and brightest jewels that ever shone under
the brilliant rays of God's shining sun would be immeasurably lowered
by voting upon questions relating to the taxation of their own
property. Yet, under the vagaries of this disease, this same
convention conferred on husbands the right to vote on their wives'
property. This is the same character of chivalry which gives the wages
of the brightest, fairest jewels to the husband, which makes
impossible equal pay for equal work and which classes the jewels with
the idiots, insane and criminals in that and other States."
The program was so crowded with attractions that it left no time for
the usual conferences on work and campaigns, so they were placed at
9:30 a.m. As they had been so largely attended by visitors the
preceding year as to call forth a rule from the Board of Officers that
thereafter delegates only should be permitted to attend them, this was
not disastrous. Early morning conferences therefore were held on
Organization and Press and two others took the form of State
presidents' councils. The Plan of Work recommended again by the
Executive Committee and adopted by the convention urged work in
Congressional districts for the 16th Amendment; an attempt to secure
tax-paying suffrage; more resolutions by national and State
conventions; a campaign to secure suffrage speakers at Chautauqua
assemblies and State and county fairs; prizes for essays on woman
suffrage in schools and colleges; circulating suffrage libraries and
the general use of a suffrage stamp on letters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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