orado, made the opening
address in which he said: "The greatest obstruction to human progress
is human prejudice. As long as men are controlled more by their
prejudices than by their reason, they will be slaves to habit. If
women had voted from the foundation of the Government it would now be
as difficult to deprive them of this privilege as it would be to
repeal the Bill of Rights, but as the men have done the voting from
the beginning, the force of habit is successfully battling with both
reason and justice." He refuted the charge that woman suffrage made
dissension in families, saying: "You must bear in mind that the
extending of the elective franchise to women not only elevates and
broadens them but the men as well."

The address of Mrs. Blatch on Woman and War was among the most notable
of the convention. She declared that one of the good effects of war
was that "it made women work." The _Post_ said: "Mrs. Harriot Stanton
Blatch, a daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, whose present home is in
England, laid the blame of all the British reverses in the Transvaal
at the door of what she termed 'the evils of an idle aristocracy.' In
a most dramatic manner she denounced the course of the British Empire.
After summing up the war situation she said: 'The English armies now
on the battle-fields in the Transvaal have at their heads as officers
sons of this idle aristocracy, who through their incompetency are not
fit to be leaders. They are beneath contempt, but to the English
soldier all honor is due. He is all right.'"

The speech of the pioneer Quaker suffragist, Mrs. Caroline Hallowell
Miller (Md.), delighted the audience, and her comparison of Abraham
Lincoln and Susan B. Anthony, "both having devoted their lives to
freedom," was enthusiastically received. Then occurred one of the
pleasant diversions so characteristic of these suffrage conventions.
During the interval while the collection was being taken, Mrs. Helen
Mosher James, niece of Miss Anthony, stepping to the front of the
platform, said: "This is the Rev. Anna Shaw's birthday. Her friends
wish to present her with an easy chair to await her when she comes
back wearied from going up and down the land, satchel in hand, on her
many lecture tours. Here are fifty-three gold dollars, one for each
year of her life, and we wish her to buy such a chair as suits her
best."

In response the little minister said in part: "I am not like Miss
Anthony, so used to having gif