Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/87

Anthony and Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt and the remarkable personality of the pioneer suffrage workers, but whether they came from pure interest in these famous leaders or deep sympathy with the cause, all were generous in giving to both the credit and applause they justly deserved. . . .

Mayor Paul Capdeville, who was to welcome the convention, was ill and this was very acceptably done by "Tom" Richardson, secretary of the Progressive Union, an important commercial body of 1,600 members that had joined in the invitation for it to come to New Orleans and contributed the rent of the Athenæum. He expressed his pleasure at being associated with the suffragists of the city, "who had never neglected any opportunity to promote its best interests," and said: "No other class of our citizens have done it so much good." He was followed by the Hon. Edgar H. Farrar, an eminent lawyer, author of the Drainage and Sewerage plan, who told of the valuable assistance of women in the strenuous fight against the State lottery ten years before and described the splendid work of the women since the constitutional convention of 1898 had given them taxpayers' suffrage. Miss Gordon read a poem of welcome by Mrs. Grace G. Watts and gave the Era Club's welcome and then Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, who was presiding, introduced Miss Anthony to respond. The "Picayune" said in its report:

Seated upon the platform was Miss Susan B. Anthony, the woman who for two-score years stood the brunt of ridicule, sarcasm and cartooning and never once was deterred from the course that she fully believed to he the just and true one. Of the great leaders in this movement she alone remains. . . . Spanning a distance of forty years stood at her side Mrs. Catt, the younger woman who has taken up the battle, and grouped around were earnest young girls and middle-aged women fired with her enthusiasm and looking up to her with a reverence that was very beautiful and a most gracious tribute from youth to old age. When Miss Jean Gordon advanced to present her with a great cluster of Maréchal Neil roses and took her so sweetly by the hand and in the name of the young women of today and of the Era Club thanked her for the battles she had fought, the scene was most touching, representing as it did the two extremes of the suffrage workers, those of half-a-century ago and those of today. There was another there, a woman who has been very near to the hearts of New Orleans people, who has never been aggressive in her advocacy of the cause but whose quiet approval, whose earnest