led in
every locality by rings of trading politicians.

Now there is only one remedy for this. You must somehow contrive
to interest the mass of the people in public business. You must
reform the primary meetings by securing an attendance of the
intelligent classes of the community. There is only one way to do
this. The same way you have already adopted in the churches, in
charitable associations, in society, everywhere except in
politics, you must enlist the sympathy and co-operation of women.
Then the men who now stay away will go with their wives and
sisters. The reason the better class of men neglect to attend the
primaries is this--civilized and refined men spend their evenings
in the society of women; they go with them to church meetings, to
concerts, to lectures. They do not break off these engagements to
go down to some liquor saloon, or other unattractive locality,
there, amid the fumes of tobacco and whisky, to find everything
already cut and dried beforehand. They try it once or twice and
then retire for life disgusted. We ask suffrage for women because
they are different from men. Not better nor wiser on the whole,
but better and wiser in certain respects. They are more
temperate, more chaste, more economical. Their presence will
appeal to the self-respect of men. Thus both will be improved,
and politics will be redeemed and purified.

The second session of this Convention was held in Brooklyn, in
Plymouth Church. At this meeting the Chairman of the Executive
Committee, Mrs. Lucy Stone read her annual report, and then the
delegates from the different States gave accounts of the cause in
all parts of the Union, as carried on by means of the State
societies. At the opening of the afternoon session Col. HIGGINSON
read the following letters:

ANDOVER, MASS., Sept. 29, 1873.

MY DEAR MRS. STONE:--My regret at not being able to attend
the meetings of the American Suffrage Association this year,
is not consoled by the pleasure of expressing, by letter, my
warmest sympathy with their objects; but, if we can not do
the thing we would, we must do the next best thing to it.

To say that I believe in womanhood suffrage with my whole
head and heart, is very imperfe