Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/103

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THE NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1903
73

by the Rev. Marie Jenney and the singing of "The Lord is my shepherd," by Miss Gordon. Mrs. Catt, who presided, paid eloquent tribute to those who had died during the year, among them Mrs. Esther Morris, to whom the women of Wyoming were principally indebted for the suffrage in 1869; to the Hon. Thomas B. Reed of Maine, one of the most distinguished Speakers of the lower House of Congress and always a staunch supporter of woman suffrage; to Madame Sophie Levovna Friedland, delegate from Russia to the International Woman Suffrage Conference the preceding year, who died soon after returning home; to Dr. Hannah Longshore, the first woman physician in Philadelphia, and told of the bitter opposition she had to overcome, adding: "She gave to the Pennsylvania Association its splendid president, her daughter, Mrs. Blankenburg." Mrs. Catt spoke also of Mrs. Cornelia Collins Hussey of New Jersey and her boundless generosity, saying: "Often and often she sent a hundred dollars to our treasury with a note: 'I have just sold a piece of real estate and I want to give a part of the proceeds to the suffrage cause.'" Miss Blackwell added to the tribute: 'A quiet woman of Quaker blood, never seeking office or prominence, she came to the relief of our distressed officers on innumerable occasions. She once told me that there were many who could write and speak for equal suffrage but that the Lord seemed to have given her only one talent, that of making money, and she meant to use it for the cause. .... She was a great believer in preaching the gospel of reform through the printed page and she and her daughter, Dr. Mary D. Hussey, who was like-minded with her, have sent out probably more equal suffrage literature than any other two women in the United States. She placed the Woman's Journal in a great number of college reading-rooms and sent it far and wide. During the thirty-three years that the paper has been published—and published always at a financial loss—she has been one of its most steadfast and generous friends."[1]

"The palm of victory has come this year to Elizabeth Cady Stanton," said Mrs. Catt, "but though she has gone it is still our privilege to have her friend and co-worker, Susan B. Anthony,

  1. Mrs. Hussey left a bequest of $10,000 to the National American Woman Suffrage Association.