ton who have the same interest in the
city government that men have, and yet can have no voice in the
matter. Make this bazar a success and so enable us to take
Massachusetts by its four corners and shake it till it gives suffrage
to women."

_1888._--The twentieth annual meeting was held in Cincinnati, Ohio,
November 20-22, with large crowds in attendance and much interest
shown. The _Enquirer_ said: "The audiences may be said to have
chestnutized the time-honored assertion that advocates of the ballot
for the fair sex are unable to win even womankind to their way of
thinking. New faces of ladies of the highest standing in society are
seen at every succeeding session. The Scottish Rite Cathedral has
rarely or never held as large a number of ladies, and equally rarely
has there been present at a meeting of woman suffragists so large a
proportion of men." And the _Commercial Gazette_: "The Scottish Rite
Cathedral never held a finer-looking company, composed as it was of a
large number of the oldest and best citizens."

The Hon. Wm. Dudley Foulke presided.[144] Addresses of welcome were
made by the Hon. Alphonso Taft and Mrs. McClellan Brown, president of
the Wesleyan Woman's College. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe responded.

In a letter the Hon. George William Curtis said: "Every change in the
restrictive laws regarding women is an acknowledgment of the justice
of the demand for equal suffrage. The case was conceded when women
became property holders and taxpayers in their own right. In every way
their interest in society is the same as that of men, and the reason
for their voting in school meetings is conclusive for their voting
upon the appropriation of other taxes which they pay."

U. S. Senator George F. Hoar wrote: "My belief in the wisdom and
justice of the demand that women shall be admitted to the ballot
grows stronger every year." In a letter to Lucy Stone, Clara Barton
wrote:

It gives me pain to be compelled to decline your generous
invitation to attend your annual meeting, but there is a deep
pleasure in the thought that you remembered and desired me to be
with you. Nowhere would I so gladly speak my little word for
woman, her rights, her needs, her privileges delayed and
debarred--yet blessed with the grand advance of the last thirty
years, the budding and blossoming of the seed sown in darkness,
doubt and humiliation, scattered by the winds of conscious
superiority