reason for hope for humanity. Underlying all the tumult and disorder of our time is one grand, golden thought, that of the human brotherhood of the world. There never was a democracy comparable to ours, faulty as it is and hopeless as it appears to some. Though the ideal does not seem to impress itself upon the world, yet in the silence it is there. .... Today is the best this world has ever seen. Tomorrow will be still better."
Miss Gordon spoke on A Sustaining Faith, showing that from labor, from all forms of social service and from countless sources was converging the demand for the reform which the suffrage association was seeking. Miss Blackwell (Mass.) talked briefly as always but clearly and convincingly on The New Woman. Miss Laura Clay (Ky.) began her address on Dimes: "As an auditor I have been going over our treasurer's books. Usually such books are mere debits and credits but in ours those stiff rows of figures tell many beautiful things—the sacrifices of the poor and the generosity of the rich—but best of all are the 'dimes' because they are the dues paid to the association. They bear the figure of Liberty and they stand for it. .... These dimes are inspiring, for they represent our membership when we gather here from the four corners of the nation. Therefore I rejoice over these thousands and thousands, each with a human heart behind it."
"No woman has a record of greater faithfulness in this cause," Mrs. Catt said in introducing Mrs. Mary J. Coggeshall, who began her remarks on Precedents by saying: "I come from Iowa where things are very different from those in this beautiful capital. We do not see Senators and Representatives on every hand but we have lent to Washington, Secretary of Agriculture Wilson, Secretary of the Treasury Shaw, Speaker of the House Henderson and also Mrs. Catt to lead the suffrage clans."
The evening closed with Mrs. Catt's presidential address, the full report of which filled eleven columns of the Woman's Journal. The subject was the vital necessity of an educational qualification for the use of the ballot in a country which opens its gates to immigration from the whole world. Little idea of its logic and virility can be conveyed by detached quotations. Referring to the necessity for enfranchising women she said: "Despite the
