Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/186

a way complements the masculine. I frankly believe that we have half the intelligence and good sense of humanity and that it is quite time we should express not only our sentiments but our determined will to set our faces toward justice and right and to follow these through the thorny wilderness if necessary— follow them straight, not to the 'bitter end,' for it will not be bitter but very sweet and I hope it will come before my end comes."

For the second time Dr. Shaw had written her president's address but although it was a statesmanlike document the audience missed the spontaneity, the sparkle of wit, the flashes of eloquence that distinguished her oratory above that of all others, and there was a general demand that hereafter she should give them the spoken instead of the written word. She complied and while it was a gain to the audiences of her day and generation it was a great loss to posterity. Even extended quotations can give little idea of this address which filled over ten columns of the Woman's Journal.

For the first time in the history of our association we meet to protest against the disenfranchisement of women in a State in which the first public demand for a part in the conduct of our government was made by a woman. It was in an impassioned appeal to your Assembly, that in 1647 Mistress Margaret Brent demanded "a part and voyce" as representative of the estate of her kinsman, Lord Baltimore, whose name your city bears. Here Mary Catherine Goddard published Baltimore's only newspaper through all the severe struggle of the Revolutionary War, and it is stated upon good authority that when Congress, then in session in Baltimore, sent out the official Declaration of Independence, with the names of the signers attached, it was published by official order in Miss Goddard's paper; that her name was on the sheet which was officially circulated throughout the country; but, although a memorial sheet was afterwards placed in the Court House, Miss Goddard's name was not left on it. This omission is but one of many evidences that in the compilation of the world's historic events it has been customary to overlook the part performed by women.

Dr. Shaw took up the section on Labor in President Roosevelt's recent message to Congress in which he recommended a thorough investigation of the condition of women in industry, saying: "There is an almost complete dearth of data on which to base any trustworthy conclusions," and then drawing this one: