Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/9

  PREFACE

The History of Woman Suffrage is comprised in six volumes averaging about one thousand pages each, of which the two just finished are the last. While it is primarily a history of this great movement in the United States it covers to some degree that of the whole world. The chapter on Great Britain was prepared for Volume VI by Mrs. Millicent Garrett Fawcett, leader of the movement there for half a century. The accounts of the gaining of woman suffrage in other countries come from the highest authorities. Their contest was short compared to that in the two oldest countries on the globe with a constitutional form of government — the United States and Great Britainand in the former it began nearly twenty years earlier than in the latter. The effort of women in the "greatest republic on earth" to obtain a voice in its government began in 1848 and ended in complete victory in 1920. In Great Britain it is not yet entirely accomplished, although in all her colonies except South Africa women vote on the same terms as men.

Doubtless other histories of this world wide movement will be written but at present the student will find himself largely confined to these six volumes. This is especially true of the United States and many of the documents of the earliest period would have been lost for all time if they had not been preserved in the first three volumes. These also contain much information which does not exist elsewhere regarding the struggle of women for other rights besides that of the franchise. That the materials were collected and cared for until they could be utilized was due to Miss Susan B. Anthony's appreciation of their value. The story of the trials and tribulations of preparing those volumes during ten years is told in Volume II, page 612, and in the Preface of Volume IV. They were written and edited principally by Miss Anthony and Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and covered the history from the beginning of the century to 1884. The writers expected when they began in 1877 to bring out one small