e community ... on the
sad 'evil' ... is the sincerity of her profound ignorance on the
subject."[324]

* * * * *

Having bravely done her bit for social purity, Susan with relief
turned again to her favorite lecture, "Bread and the Ballot." Her
message fell on fertile ground. These western men and women saw
justice in her reasoning. Having broken with tradition by leaving the
East for the frontier, they could more easily drop old ways for new.
Western men also recognized the influence for good that women had
brought to lonely bleak western towns--better homes, cleanliness,
comfort, then schools, churches, law and order--and many of them were
willing to give women the vote. All they needed was prodding to
translate that willingness into law.

As she continued her lecturing, she kept her watchful eye on her
family and the annual New York and Washington conventions, attending
to many of the routine details herself. Finally, on May 1, 1876, she
recorded in her diary, "The day of Jubilee for me has come. I have
paid the last dollar of the _Revolution_ debt."[325]

Even the press took notice, the Chicago _Daily News_ commenting, "By
working six years and devoting to the purpose all the money she could
earn, she has paid the debt and interest. And now, when the creditors
of that paper and others who really know her, hear the name of Susan
B. Anthony, they feel inclined to raise their hats in reverence."[326]

FOOTNOTES:

[314] Ms., Diary, Nov. 4, 1874.

[315] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 457. Frances Willard took her stand for
woman suffrage in the W.C.T.U. in 1876.

[316] Ms., Diary, Sept., 1877.

[317] To James Redpath, Dec. 23, 1870, Alma Lutz Collection.

[318] New York _Graphic_, Sept. 12, 1874. Mrs. Hooker believed her
half-brother guilty and repeatedly urged him to confess, assuring him
she would join him in announcing "a new social freedom." Kenneth R.
Andrews, Nook Farm (Cambridge, Mass., 1950), pp. 36-39. Rumors that
Mrs. Hooker was insane were deliberately circulated.

[319] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 463.

[320] _Ibid._ Only a few entries relating to the Beecher-Tilton case
remain in the Susan B. Anthony diaries, now in the Library of
Congress, and the diary for 1875 is not there.

[321] _Ibid._, p. 462.

[322] _Ibid._, II, pp. 1007-1009.

[323] _Ibid._, I, p. 468.

[324] _Ibid._, p. 470. Miss Anthony interrupted her lecturing for nine
weeks to nurse her brother Dan