Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/199

 by some of the most distinguished women educators of the country certainly should sustain this claim so far as the higher education is concerned. It seems a sacrilege to use only brief quotations from these important contributions to the literature of the movement for woman suffrage.


 * It will not be possible in the limited time given to the representatives of colleges for women to do more than suggest what has been accomplished for the higher education of women by Miss Anthony and other suffragists, but it is a pleasure to have this opportunity to add our tribute of appreciation

At a meeting called in 1851 at. Seneca Falls, N. Y., to consider founding a People's College. Miss Anthony, Lucy Stone and Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton were determined that the constitution and by-laws should be framed so as to admit women on the same terms as men and finally carried their point. The college, however, before it was fairly started was merged in Cornell University. Five years later Miss Anthony's lecture on "Co-education" brought that subject most forcibly to the attention of the publicIt was no part of Miss Anthony's plan to have work given to women for which they were not fitted but rather that they should be prepared to do well whatever they attempted. There were not to be two standards of efficiency, one for the man and another for the woman. "Think your best thoughts, speak your best words, do your best work, looking to your own conscience for approval," was her charge to women forty years agoThe higher education of women should be added to the list of causes for which she and other women struggled. She has lived to see the work of her hands established in the gaining of educational and social rights for women which might well be called revolutionary, so momentous have been the changes

It seems almost inexplicable that changes surely as radical as giving to women the opportunity to vote should be accepted today as perfectly natural while the political right is still viewed somewhat askanceThe time will come when some of us will look back upon the arguments against the granting of the suffrage to women with as much incredulity as that with which we now read those against their education. Then shall it be said of the woman, who with gentleness and strength, courage and patience, has been unswerving in her allegiance to the aim which she had set before her, "Give her of the fruit of her hands and let her own works praise her in the gates."


 * The personal experience will perhaps be pardoned if it is considered representative of the possibly changing attitude of other college women toward the subject. The natural Stages in the development seem to have been, opposition, due to ignorance; rejection, due to conscientious disapproval; indifference, due to preoccupation in other lines of work; acceptance, due to ap-