action of Congress during the past year in admitting Wyoming as a State with woman suffrage in its constitution:
The admission of Wyoming into the Union as a State with equal rights for women guaranteed in its organic law, not only sets a seal of approval upon woman suffrage after a practical experience of twenty-one years, but it makes woman a recognized factor in national politics. Hereafter the Chief Executive and both Houses of Congress will owe their election partly to the votes of women. The injustice and absurdity of allowing women in one State to be sovereign rulers, and across the line in every direction obliging them to occupy the position of a subject class, taxed without representation and governed without consent—and this in a nation which by its Constitution guarantees equal rights to all the States and equal protection to all their citizens—must soon be manifest even to the most conservative and prejudiced. We therefore congratulate the friends of woman suffrage everywhere that at last there is one spot under the American flag where equal justice is done to women. Wyoming, all hail; the first true republic the world has ever seen!
The program attracted considerable attention from a design on the cover showing a woman yoked with an ox to the plow, and, looking down upon them a girl in a college cap and gown with the inscription, "Above the Senior Wrangler," referring to the recent victory at Cambridge University, England, by Philippa Fawcett, in outranking the male student who stood highest in mathematics. The first session was opened by the singing of Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert's inspiring hymn, The New America. After a welcome by Mrs. Ella M. S. Marble, president of the District W. S. A., Miss Anthony read the address of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was in England, entitled, The Degradation of Disfranchisement, which said in part:
Disfranchisement is the last lingering shadow of the old spirit of caste which always has divided humanity into classes of greater or less inferiority, some even below certain animals that were considered special favorites with Heaven. One can not contemplate these revolting distinctions among mankind without amazement and disgust. This spirit of caste which has darkened the lives of millions through the centuries still lives. The discriminations against color and sex in the United States are but other forms of this same hateful spirit, still sustained by our religion as in the past. It is the outgrowth of the false ideas of favoritism ascribed to Deity in regard to races and individuals, but which have their origin in the mind of man. Banish the idea of divine authority for these machinations of the human mind, and the power of the throne and the church, of a royal family and an apostolic order of succession, of kings and
