Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/880

 864 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE Finland ; Lady Astor, Great Britain ; Tekla Kauffman, Wurtem- berg. In all, nine women members of Parliament attended the Congress. The others, who spoke at later meetings, were Frau Burian and Adelheid Popp of Austria; Mme. Pet- kavetchaite of Lithuania and Adele Schrieber-Krieger, whose election to the German Reichstag was announced during the Congress. On Wednesday at the great meeting in the Hall of the Reformation, three-minute speeches were given by representatives of each of the enfranchised countries in the Alliance. Yet another new aspect was illustrated by the meeting of Thursday, addressed by women from India and China. The speeches showed how similar are the difficulaies of the women of both the East and the West and how much new ground has still to be broken before the object of the Alliance is achieved." The forenoons were devoted to business meetings relating to the future work of the Alliance and they were in session simul- taneously in different rooms in the great building Women and Party Politics, Legal Status of Women, Civil Equality, Economic Value of Domestic Work of Wives and Mothers, Equal Pay for Equal Work, Single Moral Standard, Protection of Childhood- questions affecting the welfare of all society in all lands, pressing for solution and in all practically the same. The afternoons were given largely to the reports from many countries. 1 The Woman's Leader, organ of the National Union of Societies for Equal Citi- zenship of Great Britain, in its account of the Congress said : The effect of these reports was intensely dramatic, mingled, as it inevitably was, with the memories of the strange and bitter con- ditions under which the change had come. In some of the countries that had been at war enfranchisement came in the midst of revolu- tion, riot and disaster; in others it came fresh and new with the beginning of their independent national life and almost as a matter of course. "Our men and women struggled together for our na- tional freedom," said delegate after delegate from the new States of Europe, "and so when any of us were enfranchised we both were." The report on the election of women to national or municipal bodies was deeply interesting and in many respects surprising. Germany easily surpassed other countries in this respect, having had 39 women 1 These valuable accounts of the status of women in the various countries were published in full in the 252-page Report of the Congress.