"SHE FLIES WITH HER OWN WINGS"

Regarding political–and rhetorical–strategy, Scott Duniway often disagreed bitterly with other suffrage leaders, particularly Eastern women officers of the national suffrage organizations. Because the Pacific Northwest was a special place (a theme invoked again here), she believed, special strategies or persuasive appeals were required. In particular, Scott Duniway generally resisted expediency-based rationales for suffrage in favor of arguments from principle. Justifying the right to vote by predicting what women would do once enfranchised, she argued, would only threaten men and make suffrage unattainable. Instead, she claimed, woman suffrage must be justified on the same grounds that men believe their own suffrage is justified, i.e., as a right.

Although a life-long temperance advocate, Scott Duniway feared most the influence of overzealous prohibitionists. She was convinced that men would refuse to grant women the right to vote for fear of losing their right to drink. Throughout her career, she attempted to keep these two issues separate in the public mind, enduring repeated, acrimonious, and unfair charges that she had “sold out” to liquor interests. ((For details, see “Ballots and Bullets.”))

“How to Win the Ballot” is Scott Duniway’s most thorough defense of argument from principle and her most explicit statement of the rhetorical assumptions that guided her persuasive efforts: She analyzes the suffragists’ audience–men–and posits both appropriate and inappropriate appeals with which to convince this audience, including the strategic importance of humor.

On the penultimate evening of the National American Woman Suffrage Association convention, meeting in the “handsome” St. Cecilia Club House in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and following a Dvorak piano solo “brilliantly rendered” by Miss Elenora Bushnell, Susan B. Anthony introduced her long-time friend and co-worker. Abigail strode to the lectern, politely but firmly to rebuke a segment of “the National’s” leadership and methods. ((It bears remembering that these debates were not merely philosophical. Before month’s end, Carry Amelia Moore Nation would begin in earnest her campaign of “hatchetations,” smashing up ill-disguised “pharmacies” and “joints” across legally “dry” Kansas; at year’s end, she would spend two weeks in jail for wrecking the luxurious bar in Wichita’s Hotel Carey, becoming a national celebrity (Messbarger).)) The local press commented, “Mrs. Duniway has a powerful voice, and is not afraid to use it,” and called this “one of the most interesting, eloquent, logical and convincing addresses” of the convention. ((Grand Rapids Democrat 3 May 1899, 7 May 1899. Scott Duniway’s role in a controversy earlier that day is noteworthy as well. When Lottie Wilson Jackson of Bay City, Michigan, “so light-complexioned as hardly to suggest a tincture of African blood,” proposed a resolution condemning discriminatory practices in the South, particularly “separate coach” laws, many Southern delegates took offense, provoking a “lively” discussion that grew “quite warm and interesting.” Official history records that this resolution finally was tabled but omits the fact that Abigail Scott Duniway of Oregon authored the motion to strike. From a certain point of view, this action is consistent with her eschewing of “isms” of all stripes; yet it also may reflect unfortunate but typical racial attitudes, and certainly reminds that a principle such as the doctrine of natural rights can become entangled within considerations of expediency (History of Woman Suffrage 4: 343; cf. Grand Rapids Democrat 3 May 1899).)) Abigail evidently was pleased because, about a week later, she wrote to son Clyde that the “Nat’l workers at last accept my attitude toward the prohibition craze, over which we have for 10 years had much controversy.” About half a year later, she reaffirmed, “everything is lovely again.” ((Letters to Clyde Augustus Duniway, 11 May 1899 and 2 Feb. 1900, respectively, qtd. in L. Roberts 166.)) The History of Woman Suffrage offered that the talk contained “much sound sense.” ((4: 339.))

The Grand Rapids Sunday Democrat published the speech five days later. It was reprinted in Path Breaking fifteen years later. ((A. Duniway, Path Breaking 156-68. The polemical 1914 autobiography describes it as “the shortest way at my command for telling many truths that Eastern readers ought to read” (156), and concludes that “its facts appeal, today, with even greater force, to men and women in every state where votes of men are needed to secure the blessings of liberty and responsibility, or the right of self-government for all the people, ‘by no means excluding women’” (168).)) The two are substantially similar, differing chiefly in punctuation and paragraph definition. Because the Path Breaking version can be found in the public domain, I follow the Democrat in the interest of making it available. Small additions found only in Path Breaking are marked by “<>”, and those only in the Democrat by “[]”; minor alternate word choices appear in footnotes.

Coming as I do from the far Pacific, where the sun at night sinks [down] into the sea, to greet a convocation of co-workers from the far Atlantic, where the sun at morn rises out of the sea, and standing here upon the central swell of the Middle West, where the sun at high noon kisses the heaving bosom of the mighty inland sea[s] that answers back to East and West the echoing song of liberty, I realize [anew] the importance of my desire to speak to the entire continent such tempered words as shall help to further unite our common interests in the great work that convenes us.

The first fact to be considered, when working to win the ballot, is that there is but one way by which we may hope to obtain it, and that is by and through the affirmative votes of men. We may theorize, organize, appeal, argue, coax, cajole and threaten men till doomsday; we may secure their pettings, praises, flattery and every appearance of acquiescence in our demands; we may believe with all our hearts in the sincerity of their promises to vote as we dictate, but all of this will avail us nothing unless they deposit their affirmative votes in the ballot box.

Every man who stops to argue the case as an opponent tells us that he “loves women,” and, while wondering much that he should consider such a declaration necessary, I have always admired the loyal spirit that prompts its utterance. But, gentlemen, and I am proud indeed to see such a fine audience of you here tonight, there is another side to this expression of loyalty. Not only is our movement not instigated in a spirit of warfare between the sexes, but it is engendered altogether in the spirit of harmony, and inter-dependence between men and women, such as was the evident design of the great Creator when He placed fathers, <and> mothers, brothers and sisters in the same home and family. We are glad to be assured that you love women and ((PB: “but”)) we are doubly glad to be able on every proper occasion ((PB: “able, on proper occasions,”)) and in every suitable way to return the compliment. No good equal suffragist will any longer permit you to monopolize all the pretty speeches about the other sex. Every good woman in the world likes men a great deal better than she likes women, and there isn’t a wise woman in all this goodly land who isn’t proud to say so. We like you, gentlemen, and you cannot help it. We couldn’t help it if we would, [and] we wouldn’t help it if we could. You like us also because you cannot help it. God made the sexes to match each other. Show me a woman who doesn’t like men, and I will show you a sour-souled, vinegar-visaged specimen of unfortunate femininity who owes the world an apology for living in it at all and the very best thing she could do for her country, provided she had a country, would be to steal away and die in the company of the man who doesn’t like women. In order to gain the votes of men, so we can win the ballot, we must show them that we are inspired by the same patriotic motives that induce them to prize it. A home without a man in it is only half a home. A government without women in it is only half a government. Man without <a> woman is like one-half of a pair of dislocated shears. ((This analogy, borrowed from Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard sayings, often was used to convey nineteenth-century sentiments about womanhood and marriage (Moynihan, Rebel 206).)) Woman without man is like the other half of the same disabled implement. “Male and female created He them,” saith the higher law, and to them gave He ((PB: “God gave”)) dominion over every living thing upon the earth–except each other.

Thirty years ago, when I began my humble efforts for securing the enfranchisement of women, away out upon the singing shores of the Pacific <Sea>, men everywhere imagined, at first, that the movement was intended to deprive them of a modicum of their liberties. They ought to have known this idea was absurd even then, as they have the power never to allow themselves ((PB: “as they have always had the power to both oppose or allow themselves”)) to be ruled by women. But they thought <legal> supremacy over them was what women were after, and they met the ((PB: “their own”)) theory with hoarse guffaws of [good-natured] laughter. I had previously had much experience with the genus masculine, not only with my good husband, but with a large family of sons. It is needless for me to tell you, after this confession, that I am not young, and you can see for yourselves that I am no longer handsome.

The fact that men for the most part contented themselves in those early days of the suffrage movement with exhibitions of ridicule, I accepted as a good omen. If you wish to convince a man that your opinion is logical and just, you have conquered the outer citadel of his resentment when he throws back his head and opens his mouth to laugh. Show me a solemn visaged voter, with a face as long as the Pentateuch, and I will show you a man with a soul so little that it would have ample room to dance inside of a hollow mustard seed.

Having tickled your opponent with a little nonsense, that at first was necessary to arrest his attention, <you must then be careful to hold the ground you have gained.> your next step must be to impress upon <all> men <the fact> that we are not intending to interfere in any way [forceful] with their rights; and all we ask is to be allowed to decide for ourselves <also> as to what our rights shall ((PB: “should”)) be.

They will then very naturally ask, what effect our enfranchisement will have upon their politics? Visions of riotous scenes in political conventions will arise to fill them with apprehension, as the possibility occurs that women, if enfranchised, will only double the vote and augment the uproar. They will recall partisan banquets, at which men have tarried over cups and pipes until they rolled under the table, or were carried off to bed on shutters. Very naturally men everywhere object to seeing reputable women, and especially their own wives, engaged in such excesses.

But our mighty men of the Pacific Northwest are troubled very little by these vagaries. They realize as they sleep off the results of their latest political banquet, that at every public function in which their wives participate there is a notable absence of any sort of dissipation. They remember that in former times, before good women had joined them in the mining camps, mountain towns, and on the bachelor farms, <that> such scenes as often ((PB: “sometimes”)) transpire today at men’s great gatherings, were <once> so common as to excite little comment. It was the advent of good women in the border territories that changed all this, and eliminated the bad women ((PB: “woman”)) from social life, just as the ballot will eventually eliminate the bad woman from political life, where she now [too often] reigns supreme <among men>, having everything her own way. By the very charm of <good> women’s presence, they brought these changes about on the Pacific Coast in social life, and ((PB: “till”)) men began to wonder how they had endured the old conditions before the women joined them; [and] now, quite naturally, they are learning to apply the ((PB: “this”)) rule to politics. And so our men of the Pacific coast are not alarmed, as many men are in older ((PB: “other”)) states, lest women, if allowed to become equal with themselves before the law, will forget their natural duties and natural womanliness. If, however, any man [does] grow ((PB: “grows”)) timid, and exhibits symptoms of alarm, as they sometimes do, even in Oregon, lest the balloted woman will forsake the kitchen sink, at which she has always been protected–without wages–or abandon the cooking stove, the rolling pin, the wash tub and the ironing board at which she has always been shielded–without salary–we remind him that housekeeping and home-making are like everything else, undergoing a complete process of evolution. We show him that there is no more reason why every loaf of bread should be baked in a different kitchen than there is why every bushel of wheat should be ground in a different mill. We show him that the laundry is destined hereafter to keep pace with the threshing machine; the creamery with the spinning jenny and power loom, the fruit cannery with the great flower mill, the dish washer with the steam driven mangle and the bakery with the ready-made clothing store.

When women have been voters long enough to have acquired recognition of their <own> equal property rights with men, the servant girl problem will settle itself. When that time comes, there will be no more work left to do in the home than the wife and mother can perform with comfort to herself and household; and the servant girls of today will then find systematic employment in the great factories, where food and clothing are manufactured by rule. ((Abigail had used much the same language to describe the evolution of industry and its consequences for “the servant girl problem” in “The manifold duties of the mother . . . .”)) This evolution has already begun with the woman typewriter. You see her everywhere; pretty, tidy, rosy, with a ribbon or [a] flower at her throat, intent upon her work, and sure to get her pay. Then can the mother for the sake of herself, her husband and children, preserve her health, her beauty, and her mental vigor. Then can she be an adviser in the home, the state, the church and the school, remaining so to a ripe old age. But women can never have the opportunity or the power to achieve these results, except in isolated cases, till they are voters and lawmakers; and never even then, till they have had time to secure by legislation the equal property rights that they have earned with men from the beginning.

All evolution proceeds slowly. Women under normal conditions, are evolutionists, and not revolutionists, as is shown by their conduct as voters in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho. Your ideal, hysterical reformer, whose aim in life is to put men in leading strings like little children, doesn’t hail from any state where women vote.

Mary A. Livermore ((Mary Ashton Rice Livermore (1820-1905): born into strict Calvinist Baptist family; became abolitionist while tutoring children on plantation, regarding slavery as “demoralizing and debasing,” 1839-42; married Universalist minister Daniel Livermore to dismay of her family, 1845; three daughters; prize-winning author of Thirty Years Too Late, concerning temperance, 1845, and A Mental Transformation, about religion, 1848; nurse and key organizer, Northwestern Branch, U.S. Sanitary Commission during Civil War; organized first woman suffrage convention in Chicago, 1868; edited Agitator, Chicago suffrage organ, and Woman’s Journal when two merged, 1870-72; president, American Woman Suffrage Association, 1875-78; lyceum speaker, known as “Queen of the American Platform” (Riegel; Charles A. Howe, “Mary and Daniel Livermore”; Lord passim).)), at the head of the sanitary commission during our great internecine war; Clara Barton (((1821-1912): born North Oxford, Massachusetts; taught first in hometown, then in Trenton and Bordentown, New Jersey; worked in U.S. Patent Office, Washington, D.C., c. 1853-56; earned title “Angel of the Battlefield” for efforts on behalf of wounded soldiers and Sanitary Commission during Civil War; introduced to Society of the Red Cross while in Switzerland, 1869, and during Franco-Prussian war; returned to U.S., 1873; founder, in 1877, and president, for twenty-three years, of American Red Cross; instrumental in U.S. ratification of Geneva treaty for Red Cross, 1882 (Curti; M. Roberts; Willard and Livermore 1: 60-62).)), president of the International ((PB: “National”)) Red Cross Society, and Oregon’s own Mrs. Creighton ((Probably Mary Jane McCully Creighton (1844-1920): born Burlington, Iowa; daughter of David and Mary Ann McCully; crossed plains, 1852, settling at Harrisburg, later Salem; married John Creighton, of Union, December, 1868; lived in Union until 1879, when moved to stock ranch in Wallowa County; widowed in 1884 and moved to Salem; moved to Portland, c. 1907; four daughters; died at 76 after four-week illness (Sunday Oregonian 2 May 1920; Oregon Daily Journal 28 Apr. 1920).)), president of the National White Cross Association ((White Cross was “a self-supporting American organization which had a large membership throughout the Union, having for its motto, “Truth, Charity and Philanthropy,” and for its emblem cross bandages of white on a field of red. It was founded in 1898 by Mrs. Jane Creighton of Portland, Ore., and its object was the care of wounded and sick American soldiers and sailors, and aid to the widows and orphans of those who had fallen in battle, or died of disease or accident” (Encyclopedia Americana 2: 270).)), have each proved the capacity of the American woman for rescuing the race from the awful consequences of war; while every soldier proves by the very fact of his existence, that some mother has borne a son at her peril, perhaps to be shot in battle<s that woman might help to avoid>.

The very best housekeepers and homemakers in America are among the equal suffrage platform workers, the editor of the Ladies’ Home Journal to the contrary notwithstanding. They may know better than to ruin their eyes over Mr. Bok’s ((Edward William Bok (1863-1930): born Helder, Netherlands; family emigrated to U.S., 1870; founded Brooklyn Magazine (later Cosmopolitan), 1883; formed a New York-based syndicate service with brother William J. for purpose of increasing female readership of newspapers; syndicated “Bab’s Babble,” written by Isabel A. Mallon and Ella Wheeler Wilcox; launched entire page of syndicated material in 1886, including “Side Talks with Girls,” which he wrote under pseudonym “Ruth Ashmead,” later “Ruth Ashmore”; syndicate eventually reached ninety papers; abandoned syndicate, 1889, to become editor (until 1919) of Ladies Home Journal, which was becoming the most important women’s publication in the U.S. (I. Ross, Ladies 20-21; Mott 4 539-41; “Edward William Bok“)

Bok’s idea of women’s news was far too domestic and conservative for women like Scott Duniway. Ishbel Ross comments: “It suited the woman in the home but was scorned by the girls who were beginning to stir about in the larger world” (21).)) latest fad[s] in “Battenburg” or shatter their nerves over his mental creations in crazy stitches, but they can and do raise men and women, like the sons and daughters of Lucretia Mott ((Lucretia Coffin Mott (1793-1880): Quaker minister, peace advocate, abolitionist, religious reformer; born Nantucket; became known as one of most eloquent ministers in Philadelphia, aligned with most liberal, or Hicksite, element of Society of Friends; helped form Philadelphia female anti-slavery society, c. 1833, presiding over it for most of its existence; rebuffed delegate to World Anti-Slavery Convention, London, 1840; following passage of fugitive-slave law, home was an asylum (Tolles; Olson and Bayer).)), Mary A. Livermore, Emily B. Ketcham ((Emily Burton Ketcham (1838-1907): born Grand Rapids, Michigan; daughter of Josiah and Elizabeth Freeman Burton; educated in public schools and St. Mark’s College, Grand Rapids, Henrietta Academy, New York, and Mary B. Allen’s school for girls, Rochester, New York; married Smith B. Ketcham of Farmington, New York; teacher; outspoken advocate of women’s political equality and enfranchisement for thirty years; charter member and four-time president, Michigan state suffrage organization; principally responsible for bringing N.A.W.S.A. convention to Grand Rapids, 1899; president, Women’s Civic League and Woman’s and Children’s Protective League (Eagle 361-64; History of Woman Suffrage 4: 322-23, 755-71, passim, 5: 204; “Emily Burton Ketcham”; Jo Ellyn Clarey, “Emily Burton Ketcham”; Woman’s Tribune 26 Jan. 1907).)), Elizabeth Cady Stanton (((1815-1902): abolitionist, suffragist; authored “Declaration of Sentiments” of 1848 Seneca Falls woman’s rights convention; publisher, Revolution, 1868-69; first president, National Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; first president, merged National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1890; co-authored first three volumes of History of Woman Suffrage, 1881-86, and Woman’s Bible (2 vols., 1895, 1898) (Lutz, “Stanton”; Campbell, “Elizabeth Cady Stanton”).)), Lily Devereaux Blake ((Elizabeth Johnson Devereaux Blake (c. 1833-1913): author, reformer; born Raleigh, North Carolina; tutored at home in Yale College course, New Haven, Connecticut; married attorney Frank G. Q. Umsted, 1855; widowed, 1859; turned to writing stories and novels; married New York merchant Grinfill Blake, 1866; agitated for opening of Columbia College to women, 1873, leading to founding of Barnard College; President, New York State Woman Suffrage Association, 1879-90; contender with Carrie Lane Chapman Catt for head of N.A.W.S.A., 1900; organized National Legislative League to correct legal abuses (Willard and Livermore 1: 96-97).)), Abigail Scott Duniway, Lucy Stone Blackwell ((Lucy Stone (1818-1893): first Massachusetts woman to earn college degree (at Oberlin, 1847); lecturer for American Anti-Slavery Society; instrumental in calling national woman’s rights convention in Worcester, Massachusetts, 1850; presided over seventh national woman’s rights convention in New York, 1856; instrumental in organizing American Equal Rights Association to agitate for both woman and Negro suffrage, 1866; co-founder, American Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; founder, chief financier and, after 1872, editor of Woman’s Journal (Filler, “Stone”; Lord passim).

Given that Stone refused to change her name when she married Henry Browne Blackwell in 1855, Scott Duniway’s inclusion of “Blackwell” here is surprising and, to my knowledge, the only time she does so.)), Elizabeth Boynton Herbert [sic] ((Elizabeth Morrisson Boynton Harbert (1845-1925): born Crawfordsville, Indiana; daughter of William H. Boynton and Abigail Sweetser; educated in female seminary, Oxford, Ohio, and Terra Haute Female College, graduating with honors, 1862; vice-president, Indiana Woman Suffrage Association; married Capt. William Soesby Harbert, 1870, and moved to Des Moines, Iowa, where she published “Out of Her Sphere” and became active in suffrage movement, responsible for securing “woman’s plank” in state Republican Party platform, 1874; president, Iowa Woman Suffrage Association; moved to Chicago, 1874; president, Illinois Woman Suffrage Association, 1876-88, resuming in 1900; edited woman’s department of Inter-Ocean for eight years; board of managers, Girl’s Industrial School, South Evanston, Illinois; organized and seven years president, Woman’s Club of Evanston; president, National Household Economics Association; active in Woman’s Congress; moved to Pasadena, California, prior to 1910; vice-president, Woman’s Civic League of Pasadena and Southern California Woman’s Press Association (Who was Who 518; Willard and Livermore 1: 356-57; History of Woman Suffrage 3: 580, 620-21, 5: 288, 559, 6: 145).)), Harriet Beecher Stowe (((1811-1896): born Litchfield, Connecticut, to Roxana and Lyman Beecher; educated and taught at Hartford Female Academy, and Western Female Institute, Cincinnati, founded by sister Catharine, 1823 and 1832, respectively; married Calvin Stowe, 1836; seven children; authored several novels, including best-selling Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1850; following publication, become prominent anti-slavery speaker in U.S. and Europe; wrote another anti-slavery novel, Dred, 1852; met President Abraham Lincoln, 1862 (Cross; “Harriet Beecher Stowe“).)) and Julia Ward Howe (((1819-1910): woman’s club and suffrage leader; authored “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” 1862; helped found New England Women’s Club and New England Woman Suffrage Association, 1868; became leader in more conservative A.W.S.A.; served on committee that negotiated union of A.W.S.A. and N.W.S.A., 1890 (Boyer, “Howe”; Huxman, “Julia Ward Howe”; Lord passim).)).

[Remember, always, that] ((PB: “But”)) your most important point, if you hope to win the ballot at all, is to convince the average voter that in seeking your liberties, you are equally anxious that he shall preserve his own. You may drive, or lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink. Nor can you lead any man to vote for your enfranchisement till you have first convinced him that by so doing he is not placing you in a position where you may, if you choose, trample upon any of his rights, whether they may be fancied or real, healthful or harmful. Every woman knows she can not rule her [own] husband. The man who would be ruled by his wife wouldn’t ((PB: “would not”)) be worth corralling in the chimney corner, after she had driven him home. What is true of men in the abstract, is equally true of men in the aggregate. I cannot too strongly impress upon you, good sisters, the fact that we will never get the ballot till the crack of doom if we persist in demanding it as a whip with which to scourge the real or apparent vices of the present voting classes. If we can make men willing to be reformed they will then reform themselves.

<Here is where woman has, in the last two decades, made her greatest blunder.> Whenever woman ((PB: “she”)) demands the ballot, not simply because it is her right to possess it, but because by its use she expects to reconstruct the genus man by law, on a basis of her own choosing, she only succeeds in driving nails into the closed coffin lid of her own and other women’s liberties.

Men know intuitively that the right to representation in the legislature is a right as inestimable to us as to them; that it is formidable to tyrants only. [But] they do not believe themselves to be tyrants, and will resent the implication that they are such, to the bitter end. They also know that women in giving existence to the soldiers, suffer their full share of the penalties and perils of existence, equaling all the horrors of war. So when they say “women must fight if they vote,” it is easy in the awful glare of the tragedies of the present year ((Almost exactly three months earlier, Emilio Aguinaldo, who had helped lead an insurrection against Spain with the hope (encouraged by Commodore Dewey) of establishing a Filipino republic, and who felt betrayed by the Treaty of Paris, in which Spain ceded the Philippines to the U.S., fomented another rebellion against another imperialist power. It would take two years and several hundred casualties for General Arthur MacArthur and the Army to pacify the archipelago (Morison 3: 122-24).)), to convince them in the words of Joaquin Miller ((Joaquin (Cincinnatus Hiner) Miller (1839-1913): poet; California miner, 1855; lived with Shasta Indians, 1857; schoolteacher; lawyer (admitted to bar, 1861); pony express rider; Democratic newspaper editor accused of pro-Southern sympathies; Grant County judge, 1866-70; Songs of the Sierras, 1871, made him famous; newspaper correspondent in Klondike, 1897-98, and during Boxer War in China, 1899 (Corning 166; Powers 229-46).)), Oregon’s greatest poet, that “The bravest battles that ever are fought, are fought by the mothers of men.” ((A loose, condensed rendition of the first verse of Miller‘s “The Bravest Battle” (198). See also “Woman in Oregon History” and “Home and Mother.”))

When men claim to represent us, it is not difficult if we are always careful not to make them angry, to prove to them that [they don’t.] Men never say, if any woman is accused of crime, “may it please the court and the jury, I represent this woman, punish me.”

No man save Jesus of Nazareth, our divinely commissioned elder brother, has ever yet appeared before the bar of God or man, and offered himself as propitiation for the sins, debts or taxes of women.

Many good men object to women doing jury duty. They often frighten timid women by saying, “how would you like to be locked up in the jury room with eleven men?” I can’t understand why so many men imagine that if women should once be allowed their right to vote, they should ((PB: “would”)) never thereafter do anything else but vote, vote, vote, vote. Nor can I comprehend another fancy equally absurd, that just as soon as women are voters they will all be compelled to sit all the time on juries; and every one of those unfortunate jurors will always have as many little children as poor John Rogers (((c. 1500-1555): English reformer; completed and edited Tyndale’s so-called Matthew Bible; first protestant martyr to be burned at the stake by Roman Catholic Queen Mary I (Mary Tudor, a.k.a. “Bloody Mary); with Dutch wife, Adriana Pratt de Weyden, had nine (some sources say eleven) children (“John Rogers (Martyr)“).)) of historical memory; and no matter what the state of her health, and the needs of her neglected husband, and “nine small children,” etc., she will still be on the jury; and that jury will always be composed of one woman and eleven men. Such assumptions are too absurd for refutation; [and] but for the fact that they sometimes bring out negative votes, we would not notice them. Men and women always have been, and always will be, excused from jury duty–for cause.

Again we can never win the ballot by demanding it in the interest of any particular ism, union, party, sect or creed. In our Pacific Northwest, the majority of the voters stand ready to grant us the ballot whenever we demand it on the broad basis of individual and collective liberty for ourselves; and we’ll ((PB: “we will”)) never get it otherwise.

Our friends east of the Rocky mountains were amazed and electrified in the autumn of 1883 by the announcement that the legislature of Washington territory had extended the ballot to women.

<Less than> four years later, after a few self-imported agitators had made [a] strong attempt<s> to use the women’s ballots for the enforcement of sumptuary legislation, to which the men objected (even while pretending to approve it till they got the women [voters] into a trap) women everywhere were dumb-founded by the action of the politicians of the territory, who retaliated by shutting down the iron gates of a state constitution in the women’s faces, leaving them as ex-voters on the outside of the temple of liberty with their hands tied. ((Scott Duniway here reiterates the interpretation of events in Washington that had raised such a ruckus at this same group’s annual meeting a decade earlier (“Ballots and Bullets“).))

The men of Washington are not yet over their scare, nor will they be till women have made an [organized] effort to convince them that the eyes of the great majority are now open, and they’ll ((PB: “they will”)) never be entrapped in such a way again.

I pray you do not misunderstand me, friends. I wage no war upon any organization, or upon any person’s political or religious faith. Catholics have just as good [a] right to their religious opinions as Protestants. Republicans have just as good [a] right to their political bias as Democrats, and Populists ((PB: “Socialists”)) have just as good a right to their reformatory fancies as Prohibitionists. Yet, if any one of these great armies of opposing opinions should advocate ((PB: “claim”)) equal suffrage as its chief dependence for [final] success and the great National American Woman Suffrage Association, or the suffrage association of any state, should become the champion of its special ism, we should henceforth be unable to rally to our standard any appreciable vote, save that of the particular sect or party, with which the voters of opposing sects or parties should believe us allied. We need all the votes we can get from all parties, to win.

If I, as a member of the Presbyterian church ((Abigail was raised in the Cumberland Presbyterian church but, insofar as organized religion held any attraction for her in adulthood, she inclined toward Unitarianism (see About Scott Duniway n. 92; “Constitutional Liberty and the Aristocracy of Sex” n. 7; “Ballots and Bullets” n. 1; “The Visit of Nicodemus to Jesus by Night“).)), for instance, should have gone before the legislature of Oregon, seeking the submission of our suffrage amendment as a measure for enforcing the Presbyterian creed, think you that the members of the Catholic church, or of the Protestant churches <of other denominations>, sitting in that assembly, would have electrified the suffragists of this nation by voting almost solidly for our amendment as [an] ally ((PB: “allies”)) of the Westminster catechism?

A year ago, when our second semi-annual convention of the Oregon Congress of women was in session ((In Portland, April 11-13, 1898. It was eclipsed by news of the Alaskan gold rush, including an avalanche near Skagway that killed 150, and the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine and the onset of the Spanish-American War (Pacific Empire 5 May 1898; McKern 95-96).)), it was boldly proclaimed by a zealous advocate of sumptuary legislation that Susan B. Anthony ((Susan Brownell Anthony (1820-1906): born South Adams, Massachusetts; abolitionist; leader in woman’s rights reform; teacher, c. 1835-50; joined Daughters of Temperance, 1847; organized New York State Temperance Association, 1852; publisher, Revolution, 1868-70; co-founded National Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; vice president at large, 1869-92; president, National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1892-1900; arrested and tried for voting in 1872 Presidential election, refusing to pay $100 fine; initiated History of Woman Suffrage; helped found International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1904 (Lutz, “Anthony”; Barry; Willard and Livermore 1: 30-31).)), the venerable and venerated president of the National [American] Woman Suffrage Association, had declared herself a worker for the ballot as the sworn advocate of <only> one idea. I wrote at once to our beloved president, who never fails us at a critical period, asking for [the] facts over her own signature and received for answer her unequivocal denial of the allegation that she was allied, in the equal suffrage work, with any <sort of sumptuary legislation, or any other> side-issue under the sun. This declaration, which I caused to be published in the secular papers, set the minds of the voters at rest on that score, and enabled Dr. Annie F. Jeffrys ((Annice F. Jeffrey Myers (?-1910): Scott Duniway’s personal physician, trusted co-worker; Abigail credited her, as vice-president at large of O.S.E.S.A., for legislature’s 1895 approval of suffrage resolution that led to 1900 campaign; elected auditor at N.A.W.S.A. convention, which she and husband were instrumental in bringing to Portland, 1905; wife of Jefferson Myers, noted suffragist, attorney, and president, Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Commission; introduced Scott Duniway at latter’s day of honor at Exposition (Corning 173; Edwards, Sowing 210, 235; A. Duniway, Path Breaking, pp. 107, 226; History of Woman Suffrage 6: 540).)) and myself to go before the legislature free from ((PB: “of”)) all handicaps.

When the question of sumptuary legislation confronted us at the capitol we explained that equal suffragists everywhere believe<d> with Gail Hamilton ((Mary Abigail Dodge (1833-1896): author, pen name “Gail Hamilton”; born Hamilton, Massachusetts; daughter of James Brown Dodge and Hannah Stanwood Dodge; boarding school in Cambridge at twelve; graduate, Ipswich Female Seminary, 1850; began to teach; sent samples of prose and poetry to antislavery National Era, 1856; moved to Washington, 1858, and established career as prolific writer; traveled both socially and politically in circle of Republican Speaker of the House James G. Blaine, rumored to write his speeches and wrote biography; in Woman’s Wrongs: A Counter-Irritant, 1868, “devastatingly attacked the sentimental view that women were by constitutional weakness and heavenly decree limited to the domestic sphere,” but also favored limiting suffrage to “literate, male property-holders, leaving women to exert indirect political influence”; in Woman’s Worth and Worthlessness, 1872, opposed woman suffrage for the burden it would impose on the sex whose superior role was spiritual guidance via the family (Langworthy).)) that the only way to reform a man is to begin with his grandmother. This frank announcement removed the last vestige of legislative hostility, and gave us the submission of our equal suffrage amendment, practically without opposition. Potential grandmothers do not trouble our politicians overmuch. The present possible rewards of office crowd ((PB: “drive”)) remote probabilities to the wall.

The year 1900 is the period fixed by law for the final vote upon our pending suffrage amendment, and we <need> have no fear for ((PB: “of”)) the result if we can keep the fact before our voters that our demand for the ballot is not engendered by [any sort of] emotional insanity.

The men of our Pacific Northwest are a noble lot of freemen. The spirit of enterprise which led them across the untracked continent, to form a new empire beside our sundown sea[s] was a bold and free spirit; and the patient heroism of the <few> women who originally shared their lot had in it the elements of grandeur.

There are lessons of liberty in the rock-ribbed mountains that pierce our blue horizon with their snow-crowned heads, and laugh to scorn the warring elements of the earth, the water and the air. There are lessons of freedom in the ((PB: “our”)) broad prairies that roll away into illimitable distances. There are lessons of equality in the gigantic, evenly-crested forest trees that rear their <hydra> heads to the vaulted zenith and touch the blue horizon with extended arms. There are lessons of truth and justice in the very air we breathe; and lessons of irresistible progress in the mighty waters that surge and sweep with superhuman power between the overhanging bluffs of our own Columbia, the “river of the West.”

My state is the only one represented this year in this great convention in which an equal suffrage amendment is pending. The opportunity has come to us, as to the women of no other state, to claim the dawn of the Twentieth century, as our year of jubilee. To work in unison with each other, and with the women of the older states, [that,] crystalized with constitutions hoary with the incrustations of long vanished years, <and> compel them to look to the free, young, elastic West for the liberties they cannot get at home, is the proud ambition that commands my presence here tonight. Help us with your wisdom, your sympathy, your co-operation, good friends, and when we shall have been successful at the ballot boxes of our state, thus adding a star of the first magnitude to the already bright constellation of <our> four free states which now illumine our Northwestern heavens, we will entertain you with a national jubilee to celebrate our liberties, as the most fitting accompaniment to the dawn of the Twentieth century which patriotism can devise. Then shall liberty, newly born, be christened with a new name, selected for her by an octogenarian Oregonian, now confined with the infirmities of age in a New York hospital, who sent our equal suffrage association, as a message of congratulation, when the telegraph proclaimed the news that our amendment had passed the legislature, the magical greeting, “The ((PB: “A”)) child is born and her name is Alleluia.”

NOTES