Page:Meta Stern Lilienthal - From Fireside to Factory (c. 1916).djvu/61

 The question of the political rights of women began to command public attention at that time, and also came up for discussion at these deliberative- assemblies of workers; but it met with little understanding and a great deal of opposition. At its annual convention of 1866 the National Labor Union absolutely barred the discussion of woman suffrage. Two years later, at the convention of 1868, a special committee on female labor was appointed to draw up a resolution. Two pioneer suffragists, Susan B. Anthony and Mary Kellogg Putnam, served on this committee. The resolution presented to the convention read as follows: "Resolved, that the low wages, long hours and damaging service to which women are doomed, destroy health, imperil virtue, and are a standing reproach to civilization; that we urge them to learn trades, engage in business, join our labor unions or form protective unions of their own, secure the ballot, and use any other honorable means to persuade or force employers to do justice to women by giving them equal pay for equal work." This resolution was adopted by the congress only after the obnoxious words, "secure the ballot," had, been stricken out. To this same congress the Woman's Suffrage Association of America had sent Elizabeth Cady Stanton as a fraternal delegate. There was much wrangling over the question of whether or not she ought to be admitted. The question was finally decided in her favor after the adoption of the following resolution: "The National Labor Congress does not regard itself as indorsing her peculiar ideas, or committing itself to her position on female suffrage." A first attempt to bring working women into the suffrage movement was made in the same year, when leading suffragists organized the Working Women's Association of New York. The founders of this association declared that it was their aim to bring together in one organization various groups of women all working for the improvement of their condition. It was a well meant undertaking, but failed in its purpose, as the Working Women's Association turned out to be a middle class affair. One by one the delegates from the trade unions dropped out, and when asked why they failed to support an organization that stood for their own interests, one of them gave as their reason that working women wanted "not the ballot, but