campaign by the
announcement that the National W. C. T. U. Convention would be held in
San Francisco during the autumn of 1896. Miss Anthony had written Miss
Willard that she thought this would be very injudicious. She then had
agreed to postpone it until after the election, and Miss Anthony again
had objected, saying:

I am glad you think it will be possible to postpone your convention
to November; but, you see, even to do that all California will be
full of your advertisements, and the papers all telling how the W.
C. T. U. is going to bring its convention to San Francisco
immediately after the women have the right to vote, so as to
educate them to destroy the wine-growing and brandy-distilling
business; in other words, that it is going to start in the first
thing to ruin what today is the one means of livelihood for immense
numbers of ranchmen throughout the State. So, I hope--nay, I
beseech that you will withdraw the convention altogether from
California for this year. I have had letters from the amendment
campaign committee, and every one of them deplores the coming of
the convention....

Now, my dear, hold your convention any place but in a State where
we are trying to persuade every license man, every wine-grower,
every drinker and every one who does not believe in prohibition,
as well as every one who does, to vote "yes" on the woman suffrage
question. If you only will do this, I am sure you will do the most
effective work in the power of any mortal to secure the end we all
so much desire.

Miss Willard replied in a cordial letter that she had not the slightest
wish to antagonize her or the suffrage movement and would use her
influence to have the place of the convention changed. To Mrs. B.
Sturtevant Peet, president of the California W. C. T. U., who was
somewhat in doubt as to the necessity for such change, Miss Anthony
wrote:

What you say of the good influence of your national convention in
San Francisco is true so far as concerns the actual Prohibition
men; but we must consider those who are making their daily bread
out of the manufacture as well as the sale of liquors. There are
many excellent men in California who are not total abstainers, but
who believe in wine as the people of Italy and France believe in
it; and I think that, in waging our campaign, we should be ca