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| Harriet May Mills. |
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| Susan B. Anthony. |
Cortland Evening Standard, Tuesday,
March 27, 1894.
WOMAN SUFFRAGE.
MASS
MEETING IN CORTLAND LARGELY ATTENDED.
Two
Sessions Held—Addresses by Miss Susan B. Anthony and Miss Harriet May Mills.
The Universalist church was partially filled
at the campaign meeting of the Woman's
Suffrage association yesterday afternoon. The meeting opened at 8 o'clock by
the congregation singing "The morning light is breaking." This was
followed by prayer offered by Rev. H. W. Carr. Mrs. Frank E. Plumb then sang a
solo in which the audience joined in the chorus. The address of welcome was
made by Mrs. J. S. Squires. She heartily welcomed to Cortland the woman
suffrage speakers and workers and was sorry that she was not able to make a
triumphant report of this work. She referred to the defeat last year of Mrs.
Rice for school commissioner and gave an outline of the election and the
refusal to allow women to vote. She also referred to the manner in which the
liquor laws are enforced here at Cortland. She stated that she thought that
women had been used unjustly and after again extending the welcome she closed.
Miss Harriet May Mills of Syracuse, the
recording secretary of the State Suffrage
association, responded in a pleasing manner. She told what has been the aim of
the association and what is being accomplished. She said that the campaign
committee had felt sure that there were workers in this county and she thanked
them heartily for their cordial welcome. She described the efforts made by
women in Cayuga county to vote on school commissioners and showed how the men
had kept them from voting by telling them that they would have to take the
voter's oath in which they had to state that they were male citizens. The
ladies did not know that this was not in the voter's oath and consequently did
not take the oath or vote. She then very ably discussed the statement that
women did not want to vote, the legal claim of women to their own children, the
injustice woman suffers under the law, the matter of one sex making laws for
the other and the ballot as a protection to their homes. She introduced here a
catechism, which was not only very interesting and amusing, but stated the
woman's suffrage question in a nut shell. The discussion then continued of the
organization in Syracuse, the tyranny of taxation without representation, of
the work of the woman in 1846 as compared with that now. Her address was given
in a bright and interesting manner and the entire discussion was one that held
the attention of the audience from beginning to close.
Rev. H. W. Carr then spoke using as his
subject "Why the Reformer Believes in Woman's Suffrage." His
introduction was very amusing and he closed this part of his address by stating
that the only way to win is to hammer away at the same old errors. The speaker
said that there were four reasons why the reformer believes in woman's
suffrage—first, because the influence of woman at the polling places would
greatly improve them; second, woman's vote will weigh all that is right,
ennobling and uplifting; third, it will promote the education and uplifting of
woman as well as man and have a good influence intellectually as well as
morally, but the paramount reason the speaker gave was equality. God created
male and female equal. Politicians came and recreated them unequal. The object
of the woman's suffrage movement is to reform and return to the correct
original.
Miss Mills then spoke for a few moments. An
informal discussion and question box followed and the afternoon session closed
by singing "The Christian Reformer Feels Encouraged."
EVENING SESSION.
The Universalist church was packed to its
utmost capacity last evening to hear the address by Miss Susan B. Anthony, the
veteran supporter of the suffrage cause. Miss Harriet May Mills of Syracuse
presided. The exercises of the evening opened with the singing by the entire
assemblage of the old hymn, "The Morning Light is Breaking." Prayer
was offered by Rev. H. W. Carr, and then Mrs. F. K. Plumb and Miss Jessamine
Ellsworth sang the duet, "O Sing of Wyoming."
Miss Anthony was introduced by Mr. Carr.
Perhaps there are few faces in this land that are more familiar to the mass of
the people than that of this celebrated woman, who for so many years has been in the van of the battle for the
right of suffrage for her sex. Her address was said by some who have heard her
speak many times to be one of the best she has ever delivered. She is not
eloquent, but she is earnest. There is a power in her words. At times she was
humorous, more frequently she was sarcastic, and some of her sentences were
very scathing, as she pictured the unequal struggle in which she and others had
been so long engaged. She said the world was possessed by half the people. How
it came so was no concern of ours, but the question is how to remedy the evil.
There are ministers who believe in equal rights for both sexes, but they don't
preach it; there are editors who believe in equal rights for both sexes, but
they don't write it; there are politicians who believe in equal rights for both
sexes, but they don't work for it. That is the trouble.
At such meetings as this we usually find plenty
of women, a small handful of men, but the men are all gray-headed. The young
men who control things don't come. They do nothing to help the movement. For
forty years we women have been talking at the top of our lungs in favor of
equal suffrage. How to get this movement into politics is the question. Until
last year we have never found a party which had the ghost of a show for
administrative power to endorse us. Before the last constitutional convention, twenty-seven
years ago, we went through the same old fight in New York state. We got up a
petition of 20,000 women to favor us, and at the convention found just nineteen
men to endorse us.
Our object is to rouse the people to the
importance of striking out the word "male" from the constitution of
the state. This is the thirty-fifth county in which we have held meetings. We
want to present a petition to the constitutional convention that shall be
signed by 500,000 women. There are 1,200,000 voters in the state and we want
the signatures of 600,000 men upon our petition. If we were to go to the state
convention of either of the two great political parties of the state next fall
and ask them to endorse us and should present our petition signed only by
women, the petition wouldn't be worth the paper it is written on. But if we
have the signatures of one-half the voters of the state to take along with the
others we may have some show for recognition.
Miss Anthony then proceeded to review the
history of the suffrage movement in other states and showed how suffrage had
been obtained in Colorado and Wyoming. She dealt some blows straight from the
shoulder at the Prohibition party and "fifty-eleven other small
parties" which have no prospects of success. She believes in work in the
party and not in secession from a party. She laid out the plan of work to be
done in this state. It is the intention to organize a committee in each county,
with subcommittees in each township and a representative in each voting
precinct. It is the purpose to make a complete canvass of each voting precinct
to get the signatures of every woman and every man possible. These are all to
be returned to headquarters before May 8. It is also the purpose to make a copy
from the assessor's book in each town of the valuation of taxable property
owned by women and of the taxes paid by women and submit this to the
constitutional convention.
Miss Anthony closed by the remark that she
had not come before her audience to amuse or to entertain, but to scold, and
she had freed her mind.
Miss Mills then made some remarks referring
to the organization to be perfected at the meeting this afternoon. A collection
to defray expenses was taken up and the meeting closed with the singing of the
Doxology and with the benediction pronounced by Rev. H. W. Carr.
The session this afternoon will be devoted
to business, and this evening at 7:30 o'clock at the same place an address will
be made by Rev. Anna Shaw.
MISS
ANTHONY INTERVIEWED.
Miss Susan B. Anthony was seen yesterday
afternoon by a STANDARD reporter at the pleasant residence of Mr. and Mrs. M.
H. Yale, on the corner of Prospect and James-sts. She talked very
enthusiastically on the subject which has been her life work and described the
plan now being put in operation in about the same manner as in her lecture last
evening of which a report is given above.
She is unlike the majority of women in many
respects. The first one the reporter noticed was that she had no hesitation
whatever in telling her age, which was 74 years, Feb. 15. She appeared as hale
and hearty as if she were only half that age and briefly reviewed her
biography. Her father was a Quaker and she received her early education at his
home. She attended a Quaker boarding school at Philadelphia in 1838 and
alternately taught and attended school till 1850. She began her temperance work
42 years ago, but as she expressed it she soon "graduated" from
temperance to woman's suffrage, which has been her life work since. In fact she
has never done any other kind of labor, not even housework. She has not spent a
whole year home for the past forty-two years and when this last year's work
closes May 1 she will not have been at her home in Rochester for over two weeks
at a time during the past year.
Since beginning this state work she has been
delivering five lectures a week and expects when she is in Kansas in May and
June to deliver ten lectures a week. She talked with the reporter nearly an
hour on her hopes of obtaining next fall that for which she has spent a life
time of work and that for which she has given up her home and pleasures, all
for the benefit of American women.
PAGE
TWO—EDITORIALS.
Brazil's
Civil War.
Like rats deserting a sinking ship,, Mello
and Da Gama fled ignobly at the last, when all was over with the insurgent cause
in Brazil. Da Gama escaped to a French cruiser; Mello was seen in Montevideo,
Uruguay, the day the rebellion collapsed in Rio Janeiro. Nearly all there was
left of the rebellion was two ships, Aquadaban and Republica, and both these
were disabled. Da Gama was on a vessel in Rio harbor. When he ran away to the
French cruiser Magon, he left the officers and men who had trusted him for the
victorious party to dispose of as it saw fit. The tender mercy of Latin
Americans is not proverbial. It is not quite so bad as that of Queen Liliuokalani,
who was going to cut the heads off the Americans who founded the provisional government
in Hawaii, but it is relentless enough.
The dispatches say that the common sailors
on board the insurgent vessels will be pardoned, the officers shot. If this is
done, there will be more killing after the Brazilian rebellion is ended than
there was while it was on. But the good offices of all the foreigners in Rio
ought to be exercised to commend these officers to lenient treatment. The
Brazilian government will show its real power by pardoning officers too. The
cowardly knaves who led them into the scrape have saved their own skins by
flight.
It is to be hoped at least that the
execution of the officers will be delayed till the autumn, when President
Prudente de Moraes takes his seat. He is perhaps the best republican in Brazil,
having been a consistent though not a violent and reckless one even in the time
of Dom Pedro. We may hope he will bring to the government the moderation and
temperate judgment that characterize more northern nations. After our civil war
was over Mr. Jefferson Davis was allowed to live his life out quietly in the
United States, and even the Union soldiers are now glad of it.
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| Dwight L. Moody. |
Revivalist
Moody in Washington.
One is cheered by the news which comes from
the Capital City to the effect that Brother Moody is having a wonderful
awakening among the sinners there. It is not recorded that more than one
congressman—Senator Joseph Blackburn of Kentucky—has as yet been hopefully
converted, but the fact that this one has been, speaks volumes of hope.
Suppose even two-thirds of the senators and
representatives should suddenly be turned from the error of their ways. Then no
congressman would ever filibuster and delay the passage or defeat of a bill.
None would ever insinuate that a brother was a falsifier or a coward. None
would ever lose his temper or come upon the floor when he had been taking too
much of something in his tea. None would ever keep a constituent in office or
have an office made for him when there was no need of it just to reward a faithful
henchman. None of them would spend $6,000 of public money for wine and cigars
while going to another congressman's funeral. None of the cabinet officers who
had been converted would have their carriages and cooks kept at Uncle Sam's
expense. None of them would ever go junketing on vessels of the navy. No awful
private scandals or Washington lawsuits reeking with unpleasantness would
offend public morality. What an all round transformation there would be, to be
sure, if Brother Moody should succeed in converting the government officials,
high and low, in Washington!
New
Things In Electricity.
A number of experts have been giving their
opinions as to what the world of 1900 will
see in the development of electricity. They say that all the street cars and
those of railways to points within 100 miles of the large cities will be
propelled by this agent. Electrical canalboats will glide like romantic
gondolas along placid waters, only much faster. Electric brooms will sweep the
streets, electric fans will cool the air of homes in summer, electric heaters
will warm them in winter, electric cookers and lighting will do away with coal
and gas, and the domestic millennium will begin.
Both the arc light and incandescent lamp will
be superseded by the Tesla illuminator, which gives a beautiful and mysterious
light without the intervention of either globe or lamp. We shall telephone as
easily across the ocean as we now do to our friend in the next square. Wherever
there are water powers or coalfields electrical energy will be transmitted to
points a hundred miles away. Instead of loading coal upon cars and conveying it
to the factory or machine shop to be converted into power, the power itself
will be conveyed in the form of electricity.
At this time a machine is at work in several
large offices which receives and prints as fast at it arrives all the news of
the day. It is like a constant newspaper being printed all the time. Printed matter
is rolled off upon a piece of paper in much the same fashion as the [telegraph]
ticker prints. A man need not wait for his afternoon paper, but can get the news
at once.
BREVITIES.
—Dr. J. H. Spaulding has moved her office
from 7 1/2 N. Main-st. to 39 N. Main-st.
—The E., C. & N. passenger train due
here at 7:08 P. M. was about half an hour late last evening. The delay was
caused by the time taken to repair a valve stem, which was [broken] at Ithaca.
—Rev. Anna Shaw, who speaks at the Universalist
church this evening in Woman's
Suffrage convention, was present at the chapel exercises at the Normal school
this morning and addressed the students.
—The Young Ladies' Mission circle of the
First M. E. church will give a George Washington sociable to-morrow evening at
the residence of Mr. S. K. Jones on Lincoln-ave. All will be provided with a
hatchet and have a hack at the tree. The person cutting down the tree will be
rewarded.
—Entries from the Syracuse athletic
association were received this morning by Secretary Richardson of the C. A. A.
This will make the relay races and dashes at the athletic entertainment at the
armory Friday evening unusually interesting with such sprinters entered as
Myers, the champion sprinter of the state, Hughes and Coville.
—Student Taylor of Cornell university was
yesterday taken before Judge Walter Lloyd Smith at Watkins on a writ of habeas
corpus in the chlorine poisoning case. The application for his discharge was
ably urged by his counsel, John B. Stanchfield of Elmira. The prisoner was
remanded to the custody of the sheriff of Schuyler county until such time as
the case shall be decided by the judge.
—A very peculiar accident happened a few
days ago about a mile from Besemer's on the E., C. & N. railroad. A young
man was hauling logs and decided he could do this along the railroad track
better than anywhere else. Quite a large log became fastened between the rails
in some way and the young man frantically tried to haul it off but all to no avail,
for just then the afternoon train was heard approaching. He tried to signal the train but this effort was also fruitless as the train was too close to stop and
came running along and engine and cars went directly over the log, striking the
track again all right and not running off. The engine, however, was battered up
and another had to be obtained from Cortland [and] had to draw the train to its
destination. Had the train gone down the embankment the result would probably
have been serious as it is very high at the place of the accident.—Dryden Herald.
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