Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/245

 

The Fortieth annual convention, Oct. 15-21, 1908, celebrated a notable event, as it was the both anniversary of the first Woman's Rights Convention, that famous gathering of July 19-20, 1848, in Seneca Falls, N. Y., the home of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The celebration was appropriately held in Buffalo, the largest city in the western part of the State, and was one of the most interesting and successful of the organization's many conventions. Part of Call: Since we met last in convention women in Norway have won full suffrage; tax-paying women in Iceland have been granted a vote and made eligible as municipal councillors; Municipal suffrage has been given to women in Denmark and they now vote for all officers except members of Parliament; women in Sweden, who already had the Municipal vote, have been made eligible to municipal offices; a proxy in the election of the Douma has been conferred on women of property in Russia. In Great Britain, where they have long possessed Municipal suffrage, women have been made eligible as mayors, county, borough and town councillors and their heroic struggle for Parliamentary suffrage is attracting the attention of the world.

In our own country during the past year, 175,000 women of Michigan appealed for full suffrage to its constitutional convention and a partial franchise was given; in Oregon women obtained the submission of a constitutional amendment for suffrage to a referendum vote.

Though no large victories were won the advocates of equal suffrage have never felt more hopeful, as public sentiment is in closer sympathy with them than ever before. Five hundred associations of men, organized for other purposes and numbering millions of voters, have officially declared for woman suffrage; only one, the organized liquor traffic, has made a record of unremitting hostility to it and the domination of the saloon in politics has wrested many victories from our grasp. . ..

We cordially invite all men and women who have faith in the principles of the American government and love liberty and justice to meet with us in convention in Buffalo.

The evening before it opened the president and directors of the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy gave a large reception to the officers, delegates, members and friends of the association.

The convention met in the Young Men's Christian Association building but this proved to be entirely too small for the evening sessions, which were held in the large Central Presbyterian