Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/772

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HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

many others. An appeal to the Legislature, written by Lucy Stone, was unanimously adopted.

An Anti-Woman Suffrage Association formed in Massachusetts the previous year, had devoted itself chiefly to securing signatures of women to a protest against the franchise. In 1885 Mrs. Kate Gannett Wells and her associates obtained the signatures of about 140 influential men to a remonstrance against "any further extension of suffrage to women," and published it as an advertisement in the Boston Herald of Sunday, February 15. The list included President Eliot of Harvard, a number of college professors, one or two literary men, several ex-members of the Legislature, and a number of clergymen of conservative churches; but it was made up largely of those prominent chiefly on account of their wealth.

An average of ten suffrage meetings and conventions a month were held in various cities throughout the year. The Rev. Miss Shaw and Miss Pond attended nearly all, and Mrs. Stone, Mr. Blackwell, Mrs. Claflin, Mr. Garrison, Miss Eastman and Mr. Bowditch addressed some of them, besides local speakers. Two thousand persons gathered in Tremont Temple on the opening night of the May anniversary, Lucy Stone presiding. Senator Hoar, Mrs. Livermore and others made short speeches and later responded to toasts at the Festival.

Mr. Blackwell presided over the State convention Jan. 26, 1886. At the New England meeting this year Frederick Douglass delivered an oration and spoke also at the Festival, over which Miss Eastman presided. The association kept Miss Shaw in the field for six months and Miss Pond throughout the year and held summer conventions in Cottage City and Nantucket, besides ten county conventions in the fall. There were 123,014 pages of literature sent out and agents visited seventy-five towns. A suffrage bazar was held in December with Mrs. Livermore as president and Mrs. Howe as editor of the Bazar Journal. The list of vice-presidents included Phillips Brooks and many other distinguished persons. The brunt of the work, however, was borne by Miss Pond and Miss Shaw, and the bazar cleared $6,000.

Mrs. Howe, Mrs. Stone, Mr. Garrison, Mrs. Cheney, State Senator Elijah A. Morse and others addressed the annual con-