ter element to
save our cities. We must make honesty and morality the supreme
question in our politics." Who represents these if not women?...
Let us for the moment think of a great city where the mothers
have a voice in the laws which are designed to protect the
children and the interests of the home. Imagine the burdens of
city housekeeping being shared with the women who by training are
expert housekeepers. Picture a council meeting composed of
fathers and mothers discussing ordinances to promote honesty and
virtue, prevent vice and extinguish corruption. When this time
comes, we shall have less municipal depravity and shall prove to
the world that our experiment in democracy is not a failure.
Dr. Augusta Stowe-Gullen, a prominent physician of Toronto and an
early suffragist, who had come as a fraternal delegate from the
Canadian Association, spoke of the excellent results of the School and
Municipal vote in the hands of women. "We have better officials," she
said, "and therefore less dishonesty but the greatest gain has been in
the educative and broadening effect on women and men. The polls, which
used to be even in old stables, are now in the school houses and the
general tone of elections has been improved." Later Dr. Stowe-Gullen
gave a long and thoughtful address at an evening session on The
Evolution of Government.
The Memorial Service on March 21 was opened with prayer by the Rev.
Marie Jenney and the singing of "The Lord is my shepherd," by Miss
Gordon. Mrs. Catt, who presided, paid eloquent tribute to those who
had died during the year, among them Mrs. Esther Morris, to whom the
women of Wyoming were principally indebted for the suffrage in 1869;
to the Hon. Thomas B. Reed of Maine, one of the most distinguished
Speakers of the lower House of Congress and always a staunch supporter
of woman suffrage; to Madame Sophie Levovna Friedland, delegate from
Russia to the International Woman Suffrage Conference the preceding
year, who died soon after returning home; to Dr. Hannah Longshore, the
first woman physician in Philadelphia, and told of the bitter
opposition she had to overcome, adding: "She gave to the Pennsylvania
Association its splendid president, her daughter, Mrs. Blankenburg."
Mrs. Catt spoke also of Mrs. Cornelia Collins Hussey of New Jersey and
her boundless generosity, saying: "Often and often she sent a hundred
dollars to our treasury with
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