strong and valued advocate. The Washington Post said: "More than a thousand visitors were present yesterday afternoon at the first session of the National American Suffrage Convention and the first International Woman Suffrage Conference. Perhaps no other meeting of its kind ever has occasioned as much interest on the part of Washington women generally.[1] The large audience room was packed to the doors ... and it has been arranged to hold overflow meetings in the church parlors." The platform was banked with flowers over which waved the flags of thirty nations, lent by Miss Clara Barton, founder of the Red Cross, to whom they had been presented by representatives of each individual nation. Above them all hung the "suffrage flag" with four golden stars on its blue ground for the four States where women were fully enfranchised—Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho. The president, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, was in the chair.
This convention will be ever memorable because under its auspices the First International Woman Suffrage Confrence was held which resulted later in the founding of the International Alliance. The proceedings of this conference are described in the chapter devoted to the Alliance. Ten countries were represented and their delegates took part in the convention, which was welcomed on the opening afternoon by the Hon. Henry B. F. McFarland, president of the board of commissioners of the District of Columbia. He addressed the delegates as "stockholders in the national capital" and said: "Personally I welcome not only you but your cause. In common, I believe, with the majority of intelligent men I think you have won your case on the argument. Equal suffrage is equal justice and there is no reason why such women as you should be classed in the States with idiots and criminals." Mrs. May Wright Sewall, who was to
- ↑ February could be appropriately marked on the calendar as woman's month at the national capital. For many years one or more national bodies of women have met in Washington some time in February. This year an unusually large number are assembling. On February 17, the day before the National Suffrage Convention ends, the Continental Congress of the Daughters of the American Revolution will open to continue five days. The fourth triennial of the National Council of Women of the United States will begin on February 19 and extend over the 25th. The National Congress of Mothers will convene February 25 and be in session until the 28th."
