CHAPTER VII.
NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1907.
The six preceding chapters have described at length and in detail the annual conventions of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in order to show that those who took part in them were the representative women and men of the day. Their addresses, reports of committees, resolutions adopted and other proceedings demonstrate the wide scope of the activities of this organization, which from 1869 was the foundation and the bulwark of the vast movement to obtain equality of rights for women. The Thirty-ninth convention met in Music Hall, Fine Arts Building, Chicago, Feb. 14-19, 1907, and received a cordial welcome to the State of Lincoln, who in 1836 was almost the first public man in the United States to declare in favor of suffrage for women.[1] Lorado Taft's bust of Susan B. Anthony, its pedestal
- ↑ Part of Call: The friends of equal rights will come together on this occasion with an outlook even more than usually bright. During the last year full suffrage has been granted to the women of Finland, the greatest victory since full national suffrage was given to the women of Federated Australia in 1902. Within the past year the Municipal franchise has been given to women in Natal, South Africa; national associations have been organized in Hungary, Italy and Russia and the reports at the recent meeting of the International Alliance at Copenhagen showed a remarkable increase in the agitation for woman suffrage all over Europe. In England, out of the 670 members of the present House of Commons, 420 are pledged to its support.
In the United States widely circulated newspapers and magazines representing the most opposite political views have lately declared for woman suffrage; the National Grange and the American Federation of Labor have unanimously endorsed it. In Chicago 87 organizations with an aggregate membership of 10,000 women have petitioned for a Municipal suffrage clause in the new charter and the men and women most prominent in the city's good works are supporting the plea.
Men and women are natural complements of one another. American political life today is marked by executive force and business ability, qualities in which men are strong, but it is often lacking in conscience and humanity. These a larger infusion of the mother element would supply. We believe that men and women in co-operation can accomplish better work than either sex alone....
Anna Howard Shaw, President. Florence Kelley, Vice-President-at-Large. Kate M. Gordon, Corresponding Secretary. Alice Stone Blackwell, Recording Secretary. Harriet Taylor Upton, Treasurer, Laura Clay, Auditors Annice Jeffreys Myers
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