Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/408

386 Resolved, That in the crowded and intelligent audiences which have attended the sessions of this Convention; in the earnest attention given to its proceedings from the commencement to its close; in the fair reports of the Press of the city, and in the spirit of harmony and fraternity which has prevailed amongst its members, we see evidence of the rapid progress of our cause, and find incitement to renewed and more earnest efforts in its behalf.

Thus closed another most successful Convention. Notwithstanding an admission fee of ten cents during the day and twenty-five at night, the audiences grew larger every session, until the last evening the spacious hall, aisles, stairs, and all available standing-room, was densely packed, and hundreds went away unable to get in.

Let us remember that behind the chief actors in these Conventions, there stands in each State, a group of women of stern moral principle, large experience, refinement and cultivation, filling with honor the more private walks of life, who, by their sympathy, hospitality, and generous contributions, are the great sources of support and inspiration to those on the platform, who represent the ideas they hold sacred, whose tongues and pens proclaim their thoughts. Among such in Pennsylvania, let us ever remember Sarah Pugh, Mary Ann McClintock, Elizabeth Phillips, Anna and Adeline Thomson, Abby and Gertrude Kimber, Margaretta Forten, Harriet Forten Purvis, Hannah M. Darlington, Dinah Mendenhall, Sarah Pierce, Elizabeth and Sarah Miller, and Ruth Dugdale. When success shall at last crown our efforts, in according due praise to those who have achieved the victory, such names as these must not be forgotten.

Alice Bradley Neal, of Philadelphia, ridiculed this Woman's Rights Convention in her husband's paper, and Jane Grey Swisshelm indignantly replied in her "Pittsburgh Saturday Visitor" as follows:

Mrs. Neal can not be ignorant that the principal object of the Convention, and all the agitation about woman's rights, is to secure to the toiling millions of her own sex a just reward for their labor; to save them from the alternative of prostitution, starvation, or incessant life-destroying toil; and yet the whole subject furnishes her with material for scorn and merriment! Tell it not in Gath! Publish it not in the streets of Askelon, lest the sons of the Phillistines rejoice that one of the daughters of Eve, beautiful and gentle, throws down her knitting-pins, and tries her strength to wield the hammer of old Vulcan to aid them in forging fetters for the wrists of her unfortunate sisters. We would that it had been some one else than the gentle Alice Neal who had volunteered to soil her white hands and sweat her fair face, laboring in such a blacksmithshop.