ery opportunity to become acquainted with the
Mormons, to observe women under polygamy, and to speak in long all-day
sessions to women alone.

Susan tried to show her audiences in Utah that her point of attack
under both monogamy and polygamy was the subjection of women, and that
to remedy this the self-support of women was essential. In Utah she
found little opportunity for women to earn a living for themselves and
their children, as there was no manufacturing and there were no free
schools in need of teachers. "Women here, as everywhere," she
declared, "must be able to live honestly and honorably without the aid
of men, before it can be possible to save the masses of them from
entering into polygamy or prostitution, legal or illegal."[269]

[Illustration: Susan B. Anthony, 1871]

Some of Susan's' critics at home felt she was again besmirching the
suffrage cause by setting foot in polygamous Utah, but this was of no
moment to her, for she saw the crying need of the right kind of
missionary work among Mormon women, "no Phariseeism, no shudders of
Puritanic horror, ... but a simple, loving fraternal clasp of hands
with these struggling women" to encourage them and point the way.

Hearing that Susan and Mrs. Stanton were in the West en route to
California, Leland Stanford, Governor of California and president of
the recently completed Central Pacific Railway, sent them passes for
their journey. They reached San Francisco with high hopes that they
could win the support of western men for their demand for woman
suffrage under the Fourteenth Amendment. Their welcome was warm and
the press friendly. An audience of over 1,200 listened with real
interest to Mrs. Stanton. Then the two crusaders made a misstep. Eager
to learn the woman's side of the case in the recent widely publicized
murder of the wealthy attorney, Alexander P. Crittenden, by Laura
Fair, they visited Laura Fair in prison. Immediately the newspapers
reported this move in a most critical vein, with the result that an
uneasy audience crowded into the hall where Susan was to speak on "The
Power of the Ballot." As she proceeded to prove that women needed the
ballot to protect themselves and their work and could not count on the
support and protection of men, she cited case after case of men's
betrayal of women. Then bringing home her point, she declared with
vigor, "If all men had protected all women as they would have their
own wives and daughters protected, yo