Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/389

 ful surrender to the temptation of bribery from the open and avowed enemies of woman's enfranchisement, the liquor organizations.

None of these so-called defeats ought to discourage us in the slightest degree. Our enemies, the women remonstrants, may comfort themselves with the thought that the liquor interest has joined in their efforts, but we surely can solace ourselves with the fact that the very best men voted in favor of allowing women to exercise their right to a voice in the conditions of home and State. So we have nothing to fear but everything to gain by going forward with renewed faith to agitate and educate the public, until the vast majority of men and women are thoroughly grounded in the great principle of political equality.

I thank you, friends, for your 'cordial words of welcome. We are glad to come here. I always feel a certain kinship to Michigan since the constitutional amendment campaign of 1874, in which I assisted. I remember that I went across one city.on a dray, the only vehicle I could secure, in order to catch a train. A newspaper said next day: "That ancient daughter of Methuselah, Susan B. Anthony, passed through our city last night, with a bonnet looking as if she had just descended from Noah's Ark." Now if Susan B. Anthony had represented votes, that young political editor would not have cared if she were the oldest or youngest daughter of Methuselah, or whether her bonnet came from the Ark or from the most fashionable man milliner's.

There are women's clubs all over the country; did you ever hear of one organized for other than an uplifting purpose? (Several voices: "Yes, the Anti-Suffrage Associations!) Well, even the "antis" wish to keep the world just as it is; they do not aim to make it worse. Some persons have tried to belittle the resolution passed by the Colorado Legislature recently, testifying to the good results of equal suffrage, by declaring that the members were afraid of the women. I never heard before of a Legislature that voted solidly in a certain way for fear of women. We have with us to-day Mrs. Welch, the president of the Colorado Equal Suffrage Association, of whom it is said that the Legislature was so afraid. [Miss Anthony led forward Mrs. Welch, a pretty little woman in a very feminine bonnet, who shrank away slightly from the compelling hand, and showed shyness in every line of her figure, as she felt the eyes of the audience concentrated upon her.] At the time of the first recognition of women in the early Granger days, when the farmers used to harness up their horses to their big wagons and take all their women folks to the meetings, I used to say that I could tell a Grange woman as far off as I could see her, because of her air of feeling herself as good as a man. Now look at this woman from Colorado!


 * When I came before the Executive Committee this morning, and they said they were proud of me as a free woman, I felt almost ashamed to be a free woman. I thought of all the tears and sorrows and struggles of Miss Anthony and wondered if she ever would possess the ballot for which she had done so much, and I so little.