ANNA HO WABD SHAW 445 emmenty which has since granted them the right to occupy the pulpits of the State Church. In 1901 the degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred upon her by the Kansas City University, a college of the same de- nomination as the church conference which ordained her. Her family continued for many years to feel that she dis- graced them, but when she was chosen to preach the sermon on Woman's Day at the time of the meeting of the great In- ternational Council of Women at the World's Fair, Chicago, in 1893, her father was present and no parent was ever more proud than was Thomas Shaw of * * my little Anna. ' ' Miss Shaw supplemented her theological degree by one in medicine at the Boston University, and some of her friends feel that she should have taken a degree in one more profes- sion, that of law. All of her remarkable powers of argument, logic, and oratory would have found expression in this profes- sion where all of her abilities might have concentrated. While practicing her professions as minister and doctor of medicine she became convinced there was little opportunity for women to attain their noblest state until they had financial and political freedom. Considering these the most important reforms, she resigned her pastorate, gave up the practice of medicine, and from that moment she has worked and lectured and given her life to these reforms. This decision may have been in part the result of an inheritance from her great-gjand- mother, Nicolas Stott, who was a Unitarian and would not will- ingly pay tithes to the Church of England but sat on the steps of her home each year while the tax collector sold some article of household furniture with which to pay this unjust demand. Miss Shaw's highest ambition for the women of the United States, and of the world, has been that they might be free to express themselves by the only means through which citizens in a representative republic may express themselves ; that is, through the ballot. In 1892 she was elected vice-president of the National Amer- ican Woman Suffrage Association, and in 1904 became the president, which office she now holds. She is chairman of the
