strong enough to have any hope of electing their candidates must remain an open question until practically demonstrated.[1]
Women have served a number of times as delegates in the national conventions of most of the so-called Third parties. In 1892 they appeared for the first time at a Republican National Convention, serving as alternates from Wyoming. In 1896 women alternates were sent from Utah to the Democratic National Convention. In 1900 Mrs. W. H. Jones went as delegate from that State to the Republican, and Mrs. Elizabeth Cohen to the Democratic National Convention, and both discharged the duties of the position in a satisfactory manner. Mrs. Cohen seconded the nomination of William J. Bryan. A newspaper correspondent published a sensational story in regard to her bold and noisy behavior, but afterwards he was compelled to retract publicly every word of it and admit that it had no foundation.
Doubtless Miss Anthony has attended more political conventions to secure recognition of the cause which she represents than any other woman, and also has presented the subject to more national conventions of various associations. In early days this was because she was one of the few who had the courage to take this new and radical step, and also because she was the only one who made the suffrage the sole object of her life and was ready and willing to work for it at all times and under all circumstances. In later days her name has carried so much weight and she is so universally respected that she has been able to obtain a hearing and often a resolution where this would be difficult if not impossible for other women. However, in national and State work of this kind she has had the valuable co-operation of the ablest women of two generations. In no way can the scope and extent of these efforts be better understood than by reviewing Miss Anthony's report to the National Suffrage Convention of 1901, as
- ↑ For the names of the women who have addressed the National Conventions and Resolutions Committees of the various parties in the effort to obtain an indorsement of woman suffrage, and for a full account of their reception, of the memorials presented and the results which followed, the reader is referred to the History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, Pp. 340 and 517; Vol. III, pp. 22 and 177; and for many personal incidents, to the Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony in the chapters devoted to the years of the various presidential nominating conventions, beginning with 1868. Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake, from the National Suffrage Association, and Henry B. Blackwell and Mrs. J. Ellen Foster, as Republicans, presented the question to the Resolutions Committee of the National Republican Convention of 1896 in St. Louis, above referred to; Dr. Julia Holmes Smith, accompanied by a committee of ladies, to that of the National Democratic Convention in Chicago that year.
