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
The year ended amidst the usual pressure of requests, invitations and
engagements. Would she lecture for the Art League, for the Musical
Society, for the Church Guild and for a dozen other organizations of
whose purposes she knew practically nothing? Would she accept a
"reception" from the Scribblers' Club of Buffalo? Would she send a
package of documents to the girls of Vassar College, who were going to
debate woman suffrage? Would she please reply to the following
questions, from various newspapers: "Have not women as many rights now
as men have? What is woman's ideal existence and what woman has most
nearly attained it? Have you formed any resolutions for the coming year,
and what has been the fate of former New Year's resolutions?" and so on,
ad infinitum.
The "woman's edition" fever raged with great violence at this time, and
it is not an exaggeration to say that the editors of ninety-nine
hundredths of them wrote to Miss Anthony for an article. Of course it
was an impossibility to comply, but occasionally some request struck her
so forcibly that she made time for an answer. For instance, the woman's
edition of the Elmira Daily Advertiser was for the purpose of helping
the Young Men's Christian Association, and to its editor, Mrs. J. Sloat
Fassett, she wrote:
I should feel vastly more interested in, and earnest to aid the Y.
M. C. A., if the men composing it were, as a body, helping to
educate the people into the recognition of the right of their
mothers and sisters to an equal voice with themselves in the
government of the city, State and nation. Nevertheless, I avail
myself of your kindly request, and urge all to study the intricate
problem of bettering the world; not merely the individual
sufferings in it, but the general conditions. Such study will show
the great need of a new balance of power in the body politic; and
the conscientious student must arrive at the conclusion that this
will have to be obtained by enfranchising a new class--women. If
the Y. M. C. A. really desire to make better moral and social
conditions possible, they should hasten to obey the injunction of
St. Paul, and "help those women" who are working to secure
enfranchisement.
Miss Anthony received soon after this a consignment of pamphlets, etc.,
that she had ordered printed, on the outside of which the manager of the
printing house, a man entirely unknown to her, had written:
"A wreath, twine a wreath for the brave and the true,
Who, for love of the many, dared stand with the few."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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