Theodore in France.
It was Susan, however, who put the machinery in motion through the
National Woman Suffrage Association and issued a call for an
international conference in Washington, in March 1888, to commemorate
the fortieth anniversary of the first woman's rights convention. Ten
thousand invitations were sent out to organizations of women in all
parts of the world, to professional, business, and reform groups as
well as to those advocating political and civil rights for women, and
an ambitious program was prepared. Most of the work for the conference
and the raising of $13,000 to finance it fell upon the shoulders of
Susan, Rachel Foster, and May Wright Sewall, but they also had the
enthusiastic cooperation of Frances Willard, who, with her nation-wide
contacts, was of inestimable value in arousing interest among the many
and varied women's organizations and the labor groups. Another happy
development was Clara Colby's decision to publish her _Woman's
Tribune_ in Washington during the conference. Mrs. Colby's _Tribune_,
established in Beatrice, Nebraska, in 1883, had since then met in a
measure Susan's need for a paper for the National Association and she
welcomed its transfer to Washington.[362]

Women from all parts of the world assembled in Albaugh's Opera House
in Washington for the epoch-making international conference which
opened on Sunday, March 25, 1888, with religious services conducted
entirely by women, as if to prove to the world that women in the
pulpit were appropriate and adequate. Fifty-three national
organizations sent representatives, and delegates came from England,
France, Norway, Denmark, Finland, India, and Canada.

Presiding over all sixteen sessions, Susan rejoiced over a record
attendance. Her thoughts went back to the winter of 1854 when she and
Ernestine Rose had held their first woman's rights meetings in
Washington, finding only a handful ready to listen. The intervening
thirty-four years had worked wonders. Now women were willing to travel
not only across the continent but from Europe and Asia to discuss and
demand equal educational advantages, equal opportunities for training
in the professions and in business, equal pay for equal work, equal
suffrage, and the same standard of morals for all. Aware of their
responsibility to their countries, they asked for the tools, education
and the franchise, to help solve the world's problems. They were
listened to with interest and respect,