The Women of the Suffrage Movement. Jane Addams

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ who was seated on the stage. At the close of the address, to her surprise, A. Bronson Alcott, Parker Pillsbury and A.J. Grover came up to congratulate her. She had not known they were in the city. Mr. Alcott said: "You have stated here this afternoon, in a fearless manner, truths that I have hardly dared to think, much less to utter." No other speaker, man or woman, ever had handled this question with such boldness and severity and the lecture produced a great sensation. Even the radical Mrs. Stanton wrote her she would never again be asked to speak in Chicago, and Mr. Slayton said that she had ruined her future chances there; nevertheless she was invited by the same committee the following winter.

It was given at several places in Wisconsin, Illinois,2 Iowa, Kansas and Missouri to crowded houses and the newspaper comments were varied. On the occasion of its delivery in Mercantile Library Hall, St. Louis, in the Star lecture course, the Democrat said: "The audience was large and composed of the most respectable and intelligent of our citizens, a majority being ladies. Miss Anthony is one of the most remarkable women of the nineteenth century—remarkable for the purity of her life, the earnestness with which she promulgates her peculiar views, and the indomitable courage and perseverance with which she bears defeat and misfortune. No longer in the bloom of youth—if she ever had any bloom—hard-featured, guileless, cold as an icicle, fluent and philosophical, she wields today tenfold more influence than all the beautiful and brilliant female lecturers that ever flaunted upon the platform as preachers of social impossibilities."

      The metropolitan press generally acknowledged the necessity for such a lecture and complimented Miss Anthony's courage in undertaking it, but the country papers were greatly distressed, as a specimen extract will show:

      There is very little satisfaction in observing that Miss Anthony is following in the wake of Anna Dickinson, in publicly lecturing upon subjects that no modest woman ought, in respect for her sex, to acknowledge that she is so familiar with. Miss D. expatiates upon the "Social Evil," and Miss A. enlarges upon "Social Purity"—topics that maidenly delicacy, we repeat, should refuse to discuss. It would be suggestively coarse for a married woman to deliberately select such questionable themes for a public discourse; but these two ladies are spinsters yet, and spinsters are presumed to be wholly innocent of the necessary information—are supposed, in truth, to be too pure-minded to contemplate vice in its most repulsive shape, not to say analyze it, and dwell oratorically before the world upon its nauseous details. The women's crusade against liquor effected nothing, for the simple reason that women were out of their proper sphere in attempting it; but if so, how much more do they degrade their sex when they go out of the way to ask us to believe that they are intimate with a corruption infinitely more debasing and more destructive? The best lecture a woman can give the community on "moral purity" is the eloquent one of a spotless life. The best discourse she can furnish us on the sad "evil" alluded to is the sincerity of her profound ignorance of the subject.

      A woman suffrage bill was under consideration by the legislature of Iowa and Miss Anthony felt that missionary work ought to be done in that State, so she wrote to the friends in one hundred different towns, offering to speak for $25 or one-half the gross receipts. Sixty of them accepted and during the spring and autumn of 1875 she filled these engagements, the sixty lectures averaging $30 apiece. In order to reach the different places she had to take trains at all hours of the night, occasionally to ride in a freight car, sometimes to drive twenty-five or thirty miles across country in mud and snow and prairie winds, and frequently to go on the platform without having eaten a mouthful or changed her dress. Even these ills were not so hard to bear as the cold, dirty rooms, hard beds, and poorly cooked food sometimes found in small hotels. Frequently she had to sit by the kitchen stove all day as not a bedroom would have a fire and the only sitting-room contained the bar and was black with tobacco smoke. The path of the lecturer is uphill, over stony roads, with briar hedges on both sides.

      While Miss Anthony was in attendance at the May Suffrage Anniversary in New York, a telegram came announcing that her brother Daniel R., of Leavenworth, had been shot and fatally wounded. Her friends feeling that they could not go through with the meeting without her, retained the telegram until after her speech in the evening, and then she could get no train before the next day. She did not go to bed that night but, in the midst of her grief, she examined every bill for the convention and put each in an envelope with the money to pay it. In the early morning she took a local train for Albany and stopped off to bid a last farewell to her old friend, Lydia Mott, who was dying of consumption. Her sisters met her at the Rochester station with wrapper, slippers and comfortable things for the sickroom, and she learned that her brother was still alive. Telegrams came to her at intervals during the journey, and, after a most distressing delay at Kansas City, she finally reached Leavenworth at midnight, May 14, and was gladly received by her brother who had watched the clock and counted her progress every hour. The shooting had grown out of some criticisms in his paper. The ball had fractured the clavicle and severed the subclavian artery. His devoted wife and brother Merritt were in constant attendance.

Then began the long struggle for life. For nine weeks Miss Anthony sat by his bedside giving the service of a born nurse, added to the gentleness of a loving sister. At the end of the first month the physicians decided on a continued pressure upon the artery above the wound to prevent the constant rush of blood into the aneurism which had formed. Owing to its peculiar position this could be done only by pressing the finger upon it, and so the family and friends took turns day and night, sitting by the patient and pressing upon this vital spot. After five weeks, to the surprise of the whole medical fraternity, the experiment proved a success and recovery was no longer doubtful. The papers were filled with glowing accounts of Miss Anthony's devotion, seeming to think it wonderful that a woman whose whole life had been spent in public work should possess in so large a degree not only sisterly affection but the accomplishments of a trained nurse.3

      Miss Anthony took back to Rochester her little four-year-old niece and namesake, Susie B., and many touching entries in her journal show how closely the child entwined itself about her heart. She found that Lydia Mott still lived, and, allowing herself only two days' rest after all the hard weeks of physical and mental strain, she went to Albany to stay with her friend till the end came, a month later. The diary of August 20 says: "There passed out of my life today the one who, next to my own family, has been the nearest and dearest to me for thirty years."

      On October 2, 1875, she heard Frances E. Willard lecture for the first time, and comments, "A lovely, spirited and spiritual woman, characterized by genuine Christian simplicity." Miss Anthony was a guest with Miss Willard at the home of Professor and Mrs. Lattimore. When they reached the hall Miss Willard asked her to sit on the platform, but Miss Anthony declined, saying, "No, you have a heavy enough load to carry without taking me." November 4 Miss Anthony gave her lecture on "Social Purity" in Rochester, introduced by Judge Henry R. Selden, and writes, "I had a most attentive and solemn listening." The rest of the year was spent in finishing the interrupted lectures in Iowa, and the beginning of 1876 found her in the far West with so many engagements that she decided, for the first time in all the years, not to go to Washington to the National Convention. This was in the capable hands of Mrs. Gage, who was then president; so she sent an encouraging letter and a liberal contribution.

Miss Anthony still continued on her weary round-through the inclement winter and spring, sometimes lecturing to meager and sometimes to crowded houses but netting an average of $100 a week, which was religiously applied to the payment of the debt. She returned to Chicago to lecture again in the Dime course, Sunday, March 26, and says in her diary: "An immense audience, hall packed, my speech was free, easy and happy, my audience quick to see and appreciate." The address on this occasion was "Bread and the Ballot."4 She returned at once to Iowa, Kansas and Missouri, and by May 1, 1876, was able to write, "The day of Jubilee for me has come. I have paid the last dollar of The Revolution debt!" It was just six years to the very month since she had given up her cherished paper and undertaken to pay off its heavy indebtedness, and all her friends rejoiced with her that it was finally rolled from СКАЧАТЬ