The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 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 2 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
This necessarily had to be a campaign of education, of forming new
public sentiment and putting into definite shape that which already
existed. This could be done in four ways: by organization, by petitions,
by literature and by speeches. The petitions were put into circulation
in 1893.[89] As it would be necessary to use every dollar to the very
best advantage, the Anthony home in Rochester was put at the service of
the committee in order to save rent. Practically every room in the house
was called into requisition. The parlors became public offices; the
guest chamber was transformed into a mailing department; Miss Anthony's
study was an office by day and a bedroom by night; and even
the dining-room and kitchen were invaded. Here Mary S. Anthony,
corresponding secretary, and Mrs. Martha R. Almy,
vice-president-at-large, with a force of clerks, worked day and night
from December, 1893, to July, 1894, sending out thousands of letters,
petition blanks, leaflets, suffrage papers, etc.[90] The letter boxes
were wholly inadequate, and the post-office daily sent mail-sacks to the
house, which were filled and set out on the front porch to be collected.
Hither came every day the State president, Mrs. Greenleaf, who toiled
without ceasing from daylight till dark; and into this busy hive Miss
Anthony rushed from the lecture field every Saturday to get the report
of the work and consult as to the best methods for the coming week. It
is not possible to describe in detail the vast amount of labor performed
at these headquarters, but it is thus summed up in the report of the
corresponding secretary:
... Add to the correspondence incident to the circulation of our
great petition, the sending out of nearly 5,000 blank
petition-books and instructions to insure the work's being properly
done, literature for free distribution, the planning and arranging
for sixty mass meetings in as many counties, and we have a task
before which Hercules himself might well stand aghast. To
accomplish this work has taken not only the entire time of your
corresponding secretary, but that of our president, Mrs.
Greenleaf, for a full year. Hundreds of women over all the State
worked as never before, petitions in hand, travelling from house to
house in all sorts of weather to secure the names of people who
believe in the right of women to a voice in the government under
which they live.
[Illustration: Mary S. Anthony (Signed: "Your Sister Mary S. Anthony")]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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