The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2): Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty YearsHarper, Ida Husted
History
The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2): Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty Years
Harper, Ida Husted
Anthony, Susan B. (Susan Brownell), 1820-1906
Such was the situation when Miss Anthony started with Mrs. Stanton for
Kansas, hoping to turn the tide. She learned, however, to her great
disappointment, that no more money was available from the Jackson or
the Hovey fund. The proposed campaign would call for so large an amount
that any other woman would have given up in despair. Even the stock of
literature had been exhausted and there was nothing left in the way of
tracts or pamphlets. Undaunted, she set forth under a blazing July sun
and tramped up and down Broadway soliciting advertisements for the
fly-leaves of the new literature she meant to have printed.[43] She
then visited various friends who were interested in the woman's cause,
and received such sums as they could spare, but their number was not
large and the demands were numerous. She also sent out many appealing
letters, like this to her friend Mrs. Wright:
Mrs. Stanton and I start for Kansas Wednesday evening, stopping at
Rochester just to look at my mother and my dear sister, sick so
long, and I devoting scarce an hour to her the whole year. How will
the gods make up my record on home affections?
You see our little trust fund--$1,800--of Jackson money is wrenched
from us. The Hovey Committee gave us our last dollar in May, to
balance last year's work, and I am responsible for stereotyping and
printing the tracts, for the New York office expenses, and for Mrs.
Stanton and myself in Kansas, in all not less than $2,000. Not one
of the friends wants the Kansas work to go undone, and to do it,
both tracts and lecturers must be sent out. We need money as never
before. I have to take from my lean hundreds, that never dreamed of
reaching thousands, to pay our travelling expenses. It takes $50
each for bare railroad tickets. We are advertised to speak every
day--Sundays not excepted--from September 2, one week from today,
to November 6. What an awful undertaking it looks to me, for I know
Kansas possibilities in fare, lodging and travelling. I never was
so nearly driven to desperation--so much waiting to be done, and
not a penny but in hope and trust. Oh, if somebody else could go
and I stay here, I could raise the money; but there is no one and I
must go. We must not lose Kansas now, at least not from lack of
work done according to our best ability.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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