Susan B. Anthony

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While new friends praised, old friends pleaded unsuccessfully with
Mrs. Stanton and Parker Pillsbury to free themselves from Susan's
harmful influence. William Lloyd Garrison wrote Susan of his regret
and astonishment that she and Mrs. Stanton had so taken leave of their
senses as to be infatuated with the Democratic party and to be
associated with that "crack-brained harlequin and semi-lunatic,"
George Francis Train. She published his letter in _The Revolution_
with an answer by Mrs. Stanton which not only pointed out how often
the Republicans had failed women but reminded Garrison how he had
welcomed into his antislavery ranks anyone and everyone who believed
in his ideas, "a motley crew it was." She recalled the label of
fanatic which had been attached to him, how he had been threatened and
pelted with rotten eggs for expressing his unpopular ideas and for
burning the Constitution which he declared sanctioned slavery. With
such a background, she told him, he should be able to recognize her
right and Susan's to judge all parties and all men on what they did
for woman suffrage.[212]

None of these arguments made any impression upon Garrison, or upon
Lucy Stone, whose bitter criticism and distrust of Susan's motives
wounded Susan deeply. Only a few of her old friends seemed able to
understand what she was trying to do, among them Martha C. Wright,
who, at first critical of her association with Train, now wrote of
_The Revolution_, "Its vigorous pages are what we need. Count on me
now and ever as your true and unswerving friend."[213]

[Illustration: Anna E. Dickinson]

Another bright spot was Susan's friendship with Anna E. Dickinson,
with whom she carried on a lively correspondence, scratching oft
hurried notes to her on the backs of old envelopes or any odd scraps
of paper that came to hand. Whenever Anna was in New York, she usually
burst into the _Revolution_ office, showered Susan with kisses, and
carried on such an animated conversation about her experiences that
the whole office force was spellbound, admiring at the same time her
stylish costume and jaunty velvet cap with its white feather, very
becoming on her short black curls.

Repeatedly Susan urged Anna to stay with her in her "plain quarters"
at 44 Bond Street or in her "nice hall bedroom" at 116 East
Twenty-third Street. That Anna could have risen out of the hardships
of her girlhood to such popularity as a lecturer and to such
financial success was to Susan like a fairy tale come true. Scarcely
past twenty, Anna not only had moved vast audiences to tears, but was
sought after by the Republicans as one of their most popular campaign
speakers and had addressed Congress with President Lincoln in
attendance. Susan had been sadly disappointed that Anna had not seen
her way clear to speak a strong word for women in the Kansas campaign,
but she hoped that this vivid talented young woman would prove to be
"the evangel" who would lead women "into the kingdom of political and
civil rights." It never occurred to her that she herself might even
now be that "evangel."[214]

* * * * *

By this time Susan had been called on the carpet by some of the
officers of the American Equal Rights Association because she had used
the Association's office as a base for business connected with the
Train lecture tour and the establishment of _The Revolution_. She was
also accused of spending the funds of the Association for her own
projects and to advertise Train. Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, and
Stephen Foster were particularly suspicious of her. Her accounts were
checked and rechecked by them and found in good order. However, at the
annual meeting of the Association in May 1868, Henry Blackwell again
brought the matter up. Deeply hurt by his public accusation, she once
more carefully explained that because there had been no funds except
those which came out of her own pocket or had been raised by her, she
had felt free to spend them as she thought best. This obviously
satisfied the majority, many of whom expressed appreciation of her
year of hard work for the cause. She later wrote Thomas Wentworth
Higginson, "Even if not one old friend had seemed to have remembered
the past and it had been swallowed up, overshadowed by the Train
cloud, I should still have rejoiced that I have done the work--for no
_human_ prejudice or power can rob me of the joy, the compensation, I
have stored up therefrom. That it is wholly spiritual, I need but tell
you that this day, I have not two hundred dollars more than I had the
day I entered upon the public work of woman's rights and
antislavery."[215]

What troubled her most at these meetings was not the animosity
directed against her by Henry Blackwell and Lucy Stone, but the
assertion, made by Frederick Douglass and agreed to by all the men
present, that Negro suffrage was more urgent than woman suffrage. When
Lucy Stone came to the defense of woman suffrage in a speech whose
content and eloquence Susan thought surpassed that of "any other
mortal woman speaker," she was willing to forgive Lucy anything, and
wrote Thomas Wentworth Higginson, "I want you to _know_ that it is
impossible for me to lay a straw in the way of anyone who _personally
wrongs me_, if only that one will work nobly in the _cause_ in their
own way and time. They may try to hinder my success but I _never_
theirs."

Realizing that it would be futile for her to spend any more time
trying to persuade the American Equal Rights Association to help her
with her woman suffrage campaign, she now formed a small committee of
her own, headed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It included Elizabeth Smith
Miller, the liberal wealthy daughter of Gerrit Smith, Abby Hopper
Gibbons, the Quaker philanthropist and social worker; and Mary Cheney
Greeley, the wife of Horace Greeley, who, in spite of the fact that
her husband now opposed woman suffrage, continued to take her stand
for it. This committee, with _The Revolution_ as its mouthpiece, was
soon acting as a clearing house for woman suffrage organizations
throughout the country and called itself the Woman's Suffrage
Association of America.

To the national Republican convention in Chicago which nominated
General Grant for President, these women sent a carefully worded
memorial asking that the rights of women be recognized in the
reconstruction. It was ignored. Thereupon Susan turned to the
Democrats, attending with Mrs. Stanton a preconvention rally in New
York, addressed by Governor Horatio Seymour. Given seats of honor on
the platform, they attracted considerable attention and the New York
_Sun_ commented editorially that this honor conferred upon them by the
Democrats not only committed Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton to Governor
Seymour's views but also committed the Democrats to incorporate a
woman suffrage plank in their platform.

This was too much for some of the officers of the American Equal
Rights Association, whose executive committee now adopted a sarcastic
resolution proposing that Susan attend the national Democratic
convention and prove her confidence in the Democrats by securing a
plank in their platform.

Ignoring the unfriendly implications of this resolution and the
ridicule heaped upon her by the New York City papers, Susan made plans
to attend the Democratic convention, which for the first time since
the war was bringing northern and southern Democrats together for the
dedication of their new, imposing headquarters, Tammany Hall, and
which was also attracting many liberals who, disgusted by the
corruption of the Republicans, were looking for a "new departure" from
the Democrats. To the amazement of the delegates, Susan with Mrs.
Stanton and several other women walked into the convention when it was
well under way and sent a memorial up to Governor Seymour who was
presiding. He received it graciously, announcing that he held in his
hand a memorial of the women of the United States signed by Susan B.
Anthony, and then turned it over to the secretary to be read while the
audience shouted and cheered. The sonorous passages demanding the
enfranchisement of women rang out through and above the bedlam: "We
appeal to you because ... you have been the party heretofore to extend
the suffrage. It was the Democratic party that fought most valiantly
for the removal of the 'property qualification' from all white men and
thereby placed the poorest ditch digger on a political level with the
proudest millionaire.... And now you have an opportunity to confer a
similar boon on the women of the country and thus ... perpetuate your
political power for decades to come...."[216]

To hear these words read in a national political convention was to
Susan worth any ridicule she might be forced to endure. She was not
allowed to speak to the convention as she had requested, and shouts
and jeers continued as her memorial was hurriedly referred to the
Resolutions committee where it could be conveniently overlooked.

The Republican press reported the incident with sarcasm and animosity,
the _Tribune_ deeply wounding her: "Miss Susan B. Anthony has our
sincere pity. She has been an ardent suitor of democracy, and they
rejected her overtures yesterday with screams of laughter."[217]

The Democrats' nomination of Horatio Seymour and Frank Blair was as
reactionary and unpromising of a "new departure" as was the choice of
General Grant and Schuyler Colfax by the Republicans. Thereupon _The
Revolution_ called for a new party, a people's party which would be
sincerely devoted to the welfare of all the people. So strongly did
Susan feel about this that in one of her few signed editorials she
declared, "Both the great political parties pretending to save the
country are only endeavoring to save themselves.... In their hands
humanity has no hope.... The sooner their power is broken as parties
the better.... _The Revolution_ calls for construction, not
reconstruction.... Who will aid us in our grand enterprise of a
nation's salvation?"[218]

To "darling Anna" she wrote more specifically, "Both parties are owned
body and soul by the _Gold Gamblers_ of the Nation--and so far as the
honest working men and women of the country are concerned, it matters
very little which succeeds. Oh that the Gods would inspire men of
influence and money to move for a third party--universal suffrage and
anti-monopolist of land and gold."[219]

FOOTNOTES:

[207] July 6, 1866, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress.

[208] _The Revolution_, I, Jan. 8, 1868, pp. 1-12.

[209] _Ibid._

[210] _Ibid._, April 23, June 25, 1868, pp. 49, 392.

[211] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 296-297, 302-303; _The Revolution_, I,
Jan. 22, 1868, p. 34.

[212] _The Revolution_, I, Jan. 29, 1868, p. 243.

[213] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 301.

[214] March 18, May 4, 1868, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of
Congress. Susan had a room at the Stantons until they prepared to move
to their new home in Tenafly, New Jersey.

[215] Aug. 20, 1868, Higginson Papers, Boston Public Library.

[216] _The Revolution_, II, July 9, 1868, p. 1.

[217] _Ibid._, July 16, 1868, p. 17.

[218] _Ibid._, Aug. 6, 1868, p. 72.

[219] July 10, 1868, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress.

WORK, WAGES, AND THE BALLOT

In her zeal to promote the welfare of all the people, Susan now turned
her attention to the workingwomen of New York, whose low wages, long
hours, and unhealthy working and living conditions had troubled her
for a long time. Women were being forced out of the home into the
factory by a changing and expanding economy, and at last were being
paid for their work. However, the women she met on the streets of New
York, hurrying to work at dawn and returning late at night, weary,
pale, and shabbily dressed, had none of the confidence of the
economically independent. They had merely exchanged one form of
slavery for another. She saw the ballot as their most powerful ally,
and as she told the factory girls of Cohoes, New York, they could
compel their employers to grant them a ten-hour day, equal opportunity
for advancement, and equal pay, the moment they held the ballot in
their hands.[220]

As yet labor unions were few and short-lived. The women tailors of New
York had formed a union as early as 1825, but it had not survived, and
later attempts to form women's unions had rarely been successful. A
few men's unions had weathered the years, but they had not enrolled
women, fearing their competition. Women were welcomed only by the
National Labor Union, established in Baltimore in 1866 for the purpose
of federating all unions.

When the National Labor Union Congress met in New York in September
1868, Susan saw an opportunity for women to take part, and in
preparation she called a group of workingwomen together in _The
Revolution_ office to form a Workingwomen's Association which she
hoped would eventually represent all of the trades. At this meeting,
the majority were from the printing trade, typesetters operating the
newly invented typesetting machines, press feeders, bookbinders, and
clerks, in whom she had become interested through her venture in
publishing. She wanted them to call their organization the
Workingwomen's Suffrage Association, but they refused, because they
feared the public's disapproval of woman suffrage and were convinced
they should not seek political rights until they had improved their
working conditions. She could not make them see that they were
putting the cart before the horse. They did, however, form
Workingwomen's Association No. 1, electing her their delegate to the
National Labor Congress.

Next she called a meeting of the women in the sewing trades, and with
the help of men from the National Labor Union, persuaded a hundred of
them to form Workingwomen's Association No. 2. Most of these women
were seamstresses making men's shirts, women's coats, vests, lace
collars, hoop skirts, corsets, fur garments, and straw hats, but also
represented were women from the umbrella, parasol, and paper collar
industry, metal burnishers, and saleswomen. Most of them were young
girls who worked from ten to fourteen hours a day, from six in the
morning until eight at night, and earned from $4 to $8 a week.

"You must not work for these starving prices any longer ...," Susan
told them. "Have a spirit of independence among you, 'a wholesome
discontent,' as Ralph Waldo Emerson has said, and you will get better
wages for yourselves. Get together and discuss, and meet again and
again.... I will come and talk to you...."[221] They elected Mrs. Mary
Kellogg Putnam to represent them at the National Labor Congress.

With Mrs. Putnam and Kate Mullaney, the able president of the Collar
Laundry Union of Troy, New York, with Mary A. MacDonald of the Women's
Protective Labor Union of Mt. Vernon, New York, and Mrs. Stanton,
representing the Woman's Suffrage Association of America, Susan
knocked at the door of the National Labor Congress. All were welcomed
but Mrs. Stanton, who represented a woman suffrage organization and
whose acceptance the rank and file feared might indicate to the public
that the Labor Congress endorsed votes for women.

The women had a friend in William H. Sylvis of the Iron Molders'
Union, who was the driving force behind the National Labor Congress,
and he made it clear at once that he welcomed Mrs. Stanton and
everyone else who believed in his cause. So strong, however, was the
opposition to woman suffrage among union men that eighteen threatened
to resign if Mrs. Stanton were admitted as a delegate. The debate
continued, giving Susan an opportunity to explain why the ballot was
important to workingwomen. "It is the power of the ballot," she
declared, "that makes men successful in their strikes."[222] She
recommended that both men and women be enrolled in unions, pointing
out that had this been done, women typesetters would not have replaced
men at lower wages in the recent strike of printers on the New York
_World_. Finally a resolution was adopted, making it clear that Mrs.
Stanton's acceptance in no way committed the National Labor Congress
to her "peculiar ideas" or to "Female Suffrage."

A committee on female labor was then appointed with Susan as one of
its members. At once she tried to show the committee how the vote
would help women in their struggle for higher wages. She had at hand a
perfect example in the unsuccessful strike of Kate Mullaney's strong,
well-organized union of 500 collar laundry workers in Troy, New York.
Aware that Kate blamed their defeat on the ruthless newspaper
campaign, inspired and paid for by employers, Susan asked her, "If you
had been 500 carpenters or 500 masons, do you not think you would have
succeeded?"[223]

"Certainly," Kate Mullaney replied, adding that the striking
bricklayers had won everything they demanded. Susan then reminded her
that because the bricklayers were voters, newspapers respected them
and would hesitate to arouse their displeasure, realizing that in the
next election they would need the votes of all union men for their
candidates. "If you collar women had been voters," she told them, "you
too would have held the balance of political power in that little city
of Troy."

Susan convinced the committee on female labor, and in their strong
report to the convention they urged women "to secure the ballot" as
well as "to learn the trades, engage in business, join labor unions or
form protective unions of their own, ... and use every other honorable
means to persuade or force employers to do justice to women by paying
them equal wages for equal work." These women also called upon the
National Labor Congress to aid the organization of women's unions, to
demand the eight-hour day for women as well as men, and to ask
Congress and state legislatures to pass laws providing equal pay for
women in government employ. The phrase, "to secure the ballot," was
quickly challenged by some of the men and had to be deleted before the
report was accepted; but this setback was as nothing to Susan in
comparison with the friends she had made for woman suffrage among
prominent labor leaders and with the fact that a woman, Kate Mullaney
of Troy, had been chosen assistant secretary of the National Labor
Union and its national organizer of women.[224]

The National Labor Union Congress won high praise in _The Revolution_
as laying the foundation of the new political party of America which
would be triumphant in 1872. "The producers, the working-men, the
women, the Negroes," _The Revolution_ declared, "are destined to form
a triple power that shall speedily wrest the sceptre of government
from the non-producers, the land monopolists, the bondholders, and the
politicians."[225]

* * * * *

One of the most encouraging signs at this time was the friendliness of
the New York _World_, whose reporters covered the meetings of the
Workingwomen's Association with sympathy, arousing much local
interest. Reprinting these reports and supplementing them, _The
Revolution_ carried their import farther afield, bringing to the
attention of many the wisdom and justice of equal pay for equal work,
and the need to organize workingwomen and to provide training and
trade schools for them. _The Revolution_ continually spurred women on
to improve themselves, to learn new skills, and actually to do equal
work if they expected equal pay.

When reports reached Susan that women in the printing trade were
afraid of manual labor, of getting their hands and fingers dirty, and
of lifting heavy galleys, she quickly let them know that she had no
patience with this. "Those who stay at home," she told them, "have to
wash kettles and lift wash tubs and black stoves until their hands are
blackened and hardened. In this spirit, you must go to work on your
cases of type. Are these cases heavier than a wash tub filled with
water and clothes, or the old cheese tubs?... The trouble is either
that girls are not educated to have physical strength or else they do
not like to use it. If a union of women is to succeed, it must be
composed of strength, nerve, courage, and persistence, with no fear of
dirtying their white fingers, but with a determination that when they
go into an office they would go through all that was required of them
and demand just as high wages as the men....

"Make up your mind," she continued, "to take the 'lean' with the
'fat,' and be early and late at the case precisely as the men are. I
do not demand equal pay for any women save those who do equal work in
value. Scorn to be coddled by your employers; make them understand
that you are in their service as workers, not as women."[226]

Workingwomen's associations now existed in Boston, St. Louis, Chicago,
San Francisco and other cities, encouraged and aroused by the efforts
at organization in New York. These associations occasionally exchanged
ideas, and news of all of them was published in _The Revolution_. The
groups in Boston and in the outlying textile mills were particularly
active, and Susan brought to her next suffrage convention in
Washington in 1870 Jennie Collins of Lowell who was ably leading a
strike against a cut in wages. The newspapers, too, began to notice
workingwomen, publishing articles about their working and living
conditions.

Trying to amalgamate the various groups in New York, Susan now formed
a Workingwomen's Central Association, of which she was elected
president. To its meetings she brought interesting speakers and
practical reports on wages, hours, and working conditions. She herself
picked up a great deal of useful information in her daily round as she
talked with this one and that one. On her walks to and from work, in
all kinds of weather, she met poorly clad women carrying sacks and
baskets in which they collected rags, scraps of paper, bones, old
shoes, and anything worth rescuing from "garbage boxes." With
friendliness and good cheer, she greeted these ragpickers, sometimes
stopping to talk with them about their work, and through her interest
brought several into the Workingwomen's Association. Looking forward
to surveys on all women's occupations, she started out by appointing a
committee to investigate the ragpickers, many of whom lived in
tumbledown slab shanties on the rocky land which is now a part of
Central Park.

This investigation revealed that more than half of the 1200 ragpickers
were women and that it was the one occupation in which women had equal
opportunity with men and received equal compensation for their day's
work. Average earnings ranged from forty cents a day to ten dollars a
week. The report, highly sentimental in the light of today's
scientific approach, was a promising beginning, a survey made by women
themselves in their own interest--the forerunner of the reports of the
Labor Department's Women's Bureau.

Cooperatives appealed to Susan as they did to many labor leaders as
the best means of freeing labor. When the Sewing Machine Operators
Union tried to establish a shop where their members could share the
profits of their labor, she did her best to help them, hoping to see
them gain economic independence in a light airy clean shop where
wealthy women, eager to help their sisters, would patronize them.
However, the wealthy women to whom she appealed to finance this
project did not respond, looking upon a cooperative as a first step
toward socialism and a threat to their own profits. She was able,
however, to arouse a glimmer of interest among the members of the
newly formed literary club, Sorosis, in the problems of working women.

She had the satisfaction of seeing women typesetters form their own
union in 1869, and this was, according to the Albany _Daily
Knickerbocker_, "the first move of the kind ever made in the country
by any class of labor, to place woman on a par with man as regards
standing, intelligence, and manual ability."[227] _The Revolution_
encouraged this union by printing notices of its meetings and urging
all women compositors to join. In signed articles, Susan pointed out
how wages had improved since the union was organized. "A little more
Union, girls," she said, "and soon all employers will come up to 45
cents, the price paid men.... So join the Union, girls, and together
say _Equal Pay for Equal Work_."[228]

Eager to bring more women into the printing trade where wages were
higher, she tried in every possible way to establish trade schools for
them. She looked forward to a printing business run entirely by women,
giving employment to hundreds. So obsessed was she by the idea of a
trade school for women compositors that when printers in New York went
on a strike, she saw an opportunity for women to take their places and
appealed by letter and in person to a group of employers "to
contribute liberally for the purpose of enabling us to establish a
training school for girls in the art of typesetting." Explaining that
hundreds of young women, now stitching at starvation wages, were ready
and eager to learn the trade, she added, "Give us the means and we
will soon give you competent women compositors."[229] Having learned
by experience that men always kept women out of their field of labor
unless forced by circumstances to admit them, she also urged young
women to take the places of striking typesetters at whatever wage
they could get.

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