Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/85

 

In 1903 the National American Suffrage Association for the second time took its annual convention to a southern State and held it in New Orleans, March 15-25, in Athenaeum Hall. Part of Call: The association goes to New Orleans in response to an invitation from the Progressive Union, the Era Club of women and many prominent individuals. It is especially appropriate that the advocates of this important reform should assemble in Louisiana in honor of the action taken by this State in 1898, when its constitutional convention incorporated a clause giving to tax-paying women a vote on all questions of taxation submitted to the electors; and in commemoration of the splendid use they made of this privilege at the election held to secure to New Orleans the completion of its drainage and the establishment of a sewerage system and free water supply

Never in the fifty years of this movement have its advocates had such a victory to record as was achieved in Australia in June, 1902, when almost the first act of Parliament of the new Federation of States was to confer the full national suffrage with the right to a seat in the Parliament on all qualified women of the entire commonwealth. This one act enfranchised about 800,000. These added to those of New Zealand and of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho, it will be found that 1,125,000 English-speaking women are at the present time in possession of the complete suffrage and all except those of Wyoming have been enfranchised within the past ten years. By adding to these the women of Great Britain and Ireland, who have all except the Parliamentary vote, those of Kansas with Municipal, of Louisiana, Montana, and New York with the Tax-payers' and of over one-half of the States with the school ballot, the 1,125,000 will be multiplied several times

It is therefore, with courage and hope inspired by the glorious promise of the new century for greater material and moral progress in all directions than the world has ever known, that the advocates of this measure, which ultimately will affect the destinies of the whole American people, are called in convention to review the labor of the past year, to plan that of the future, to strengthen the old comradeship and greet new workers and friends.