|
In looking back over the ten years
of my administration as president of the National American Woman
Suffrage Association, there can be no feeling but gratitude and
elation over the growth of the work. Our membership has grown
from 17,000 women to more than 200,000, and the number of
auxiliary societies has increased in proportion.
Instead of the old-time experience
of one campaign in ten years, we now have from five to ten
campaigns each year. From an original yearly expenditure of
$14,000 or $15,000 in our campaign work, we now expend from
$40,000 to $50,000. In New York, in 1915, we have already
received pledges of $150,000 for the New York State campaign
alone, while Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New Jersey have
made pledges in proportion.
In 1906 full suffrage prevailed in
four states; we now have it in twelve. Our movement has
advanced from its academic stage until it has become a vital
political factor; no reform in the country is more heralded by
the press or receives more attention from the public. It has
become an issue which engages the attention of the entire
nation--and toward this result every woman working for the Cause
has contributed to an inspiring degree. Splendid team-work, and
that alone, has made our present success possible and our
eventual triumph in every state inevitable. Every officer in
our organization, every leader in our campaigns, every speaker,
every worker in the ranks, however humble, has done her share.
I do not claim anything so fantastic
and Utopian as universal harmony among us. We have had our
troubles and our differences. I have had mine. At every annual
convention since the one at Washington in 1910 there has been an
effort to depose me from the presidency. There have been some
splendid fighters among my opponents--fine and high-minded women
who sincerely believe that at sixty-eight I am getting too old
for my big job. Possibly I am. Certainly I shall resign it with
alacrity when the majority of women in the organization wish me
to do so. At present a large majority proves annually that it
still has faith in my leadership, and with this assurance I am
content to work on.
Looking back over the period covered
by these reminiscences, I realize that there is truth in the
grave charge that I am no longer young; and this truth was once
voiced by one of my little nieces in a way that brought it
strongly home to me. She and her small sister of six had
declared themselves suffragettes, and as the first result of
their conversion to the Cause both had been laughed at by their
schoolmates. The younger child came home after this tragic
experience, weeping bitterly and declaring that she did not wish
to be a suffragette any more--an exhibition of apostasy for
which her wise sister of eight took her roundly to task.
"Aren't you ashamed of yourself,''
she demanded, "to stop just because you have been laughed at
once? Look at Aunt Anna! SHE has been laughed at for hundreds
of years!''
I sometimes feel that it has indeed
been hundreds of years since my work began; and then again it
seems so brief a time that, by listening for a moment, I fancy I
can hear the echo of my childish-voice preaching to the trees in
the Michigan woods.
But long or short, the one sure
thing is that, taking it all in all, the struggles, the
discouragements, the failures, and the little victories, the
fight has been, as Susan B. Anthony said in her last hours,
"worth while.'' Nothing bigger can come to a human being than
to love a great Cause more than life itself, and to have the
privilege throughout life of working for that Cause.
As for life's other gifts, I have
had some of them, too. I have made many friendships; I have
looked upon the beauty of many lands; I have the assurance of
the respect and affection of thousands of men and women I have
never even met. Though I have given all I had, I have received
a thousand times more than I have given. Neither the world nor
my Cause is indebted to me but from the depths of a full and
very grateful heart I acknowledge my lasting indebtedness to
them both. |
