Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/527

 government—by just so much does she fall short of complete development as a human being and retard the progress of the race. We are the children of our mothers as well as of our fathers and we inherit the defects as well as the perfections of both. Many a man goes down in his business—is a "failure in life," as the phrase goes—because he is the son of an undeveloped mother and, like her, is lacking in independence, in initiative, in ability to seize upon golden opportunities. Yet she was trained to passivity, to submission, to the obliteration of whatever personality she may have possessed. What more could we expect of her son? Imagine for a moment the effect upon men had they from infancy been subjected to the narrowing, ossifying processes applied to women for centuries!

Happily for the race, however, the great majority of women are waking from the sleep of centuries, are eagerly stretching out their hands for the key that is to open wide the door of larger opportunity. Happily, too, the forward-looking men of today are seeing the vision of womanhood released from the old-world thraldom. In rapidly increasing numbers they are welcoming the new woman, in whom they find not only the wife and mother more fully equipped for her task but a comrade of congenial tastes, keenly interested in the outside world and capable of taking her place beside the husband, whether in peace or war, wherever her country callsThe suffrage movement is a world-wide protest against the mental subjection of woman. Therein lies its vital importance. It strikes deep into the core of life. It is a basic, fundamental reform, for it is releasing for the service of the State the unused natural resources dormant in womanhood; it is transforming the dependent woman into woman enfranchised that she may the more perfectly fulfill her destiny as the mother of the race.

The morning and afternoon sessions were crowded with reports, conferences and business of various kinds in which the delegates were keenly interested. Mrs. Grace Thompson Seton, chairman of the Art Publicity Committee, gave an interesting account of its work, told of the prizes that had been offered for posters and slogans and the cooperation of men and women prominent in the literary, artistic and social world; of the "teas" given at the national headquarters, bringing many who had never visited them before; of the beautiful banners and costumes designed for the suffrage parades and other features of this somewhat neglected side of the work for woman suffrage. The chairman of the Literature Committee, Mrs. Arthur L. Livermore, submitted a comprehensive report of the systematizing of that department, the classifying and cataloguing and the endeavor to ascertain and meet the varied demands. A Suffrage Study Outline, a Blue