Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/346

 the women's clubs of that State, and in a long and beautiful address she said:

With her head pillowed in the lap of the North, her feet resting in the orchards of the South, her snowy bosom rising to the clouds, Idaho lies serene in her beauty of glacier, lake and primeval forest, guarding in her verdure-clad mountains vast treasures of precious minerals, with the hem of her robe embroidered in sapphires and opals. As representing Idaho, first I wish to express the heartfelt gratitude of every equal suffragist in our proud and happy State to the National Association for the most generous help afforded us in our two years' campaign. Without the aid of the devoted women, Mrs. DeVoe, Mrs. Chapman Catt, Mrs. Bradford and Mrs. Johns, who made the arduous journey to organize our clubs, plead our cause and teach us how to work and win, we should not be celebrating Idaho's victory to-night.

After describing the great output of the mines and the fruit-producing value of the State, she continued:

I fancy few of you know much of the conditions existing in the mining country, dotted with camps in every gulch; the preponderance of the adult males over the women of maturity; the power of the saloon element, and the cosmopolitan character of the people —men from all parts of the world, ignorant and cultured, depraved and respectable, seeking fame and fortune in the far West—no reading-rooms, no lectures, no lyceums, no spelling-bees or corn-huskings, the relaxation of the farm hand; single men away from home and its influences, forced from the draughty lobby of the hotel or tavern to the warmth and comfort of the well-appointed saloon.

The missionary suffrage work in such places was obliged to be quietly done, without any apparent advocacy on the part of men who were in reality ardent supporters of our cause, lest the saloon element should organize and, by concerted action, crush the movement as they did in the State of Washington in 1889; and California, too, owes her defeat of the amendment at least partially to this cause. Yet you may go far to find nobler men than we have in Idaho, and we did not lack able champions. Our amendment was carried by more than a two-thirds majority of the votes cast upon it.

The last address, by the Rev. Ida C. Hultin (Ills.), The Point of View, was a masterly effort. She said in part:

Before any woman is a wife, a sister or a mother she is a human being. We ask nothing as women but everything as human beings. The sphere of woman is any path that she can tread, any work that she can do. Let no one imagine that we wish to be men. In the beginning God created them male and female. The principle of co-equality is recognized in all of God's kingdom. We are beginning