he two organizations were united under the name of The National
American Woman's Suffrage Association. This organization still leads the
movement in America.[45]

[45] _The History of Woman Suffrage_, by ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, SUSAN
B. ANTHONY, and IDA HUSTED HARPER, 4 vols. Rochester, N.Y.

In 1902, an international meeting was called in Washington; and in 1904
the International Suffrage Alliance was formed in Berlin with Mrs.
Carrie Chapman Catt as president. Thirteen nations are now affiliated
with the Alliance; and the women of the world are highly organized to
further equal suffrage.

Two generations of women have given themselves to this movement, and a
third still faces it. To the first group belong those leaders we have
already named: Emma Willard, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Julia Ward Howe,
Susan B. Anthony and their associates. It was their problem to secure
woman's control of her own body and property, some share in the
direction of her children, and some opportunity to train her own mind
and earn an independent living. These women bore the heat and burden of
a conflict in which all the blind prejudices of a fixed regime were
strongly massed, presenting few promising points of attack. It is small
wonder that some of these leaders gained a reputation for being hard,
dogmatic, aggressive, and sometimes careless of popular sensibilities.
The first generation of reformers in any field must be made of stern
stuff; and their beneficiaries are apt to forget the conditions that
justified means no longer necessary.

The lives of these women could not be expected to fully illustrate the
type of life they hoped to see their sisters living when opportunity was
finally won. Only women who participated in this struggle could fully
appreciate the splendid devotion of these lives to the service of a
group many of whom, being personally comfortable, were insensible to the
needs of less fortunate women; and were sometimes even willing to fight
back any advanced ideas which might disturb their own comfort. The
feeling within this group of leaders, and the failure of oncoming
generations of American women to recognize the debt of obligation they
owe to its efforts, was illustrated by an incident that came up in
connection with the Third International Congress of Women which met in
London in 1899. The session was opened in Westminster Town Hall, with
seven hundred delegates present, representing the most thoughtful women
of the