h seems to me to form an integral part of your
committee's report. It concerns the origin of the Board of Lady
Managers, and this association should be proud to be able to feel
that to our president is largely due the recognition of women in
official capacity at the World's Fair. The fact that women were
not officially recognized during the Centennial Exposition in
1876 was a great disappointment to all interested in the
advancement of womankind, and while it was suggested on every
side that women must have a voice in the management of the
World's Fair in 1893, it remained for Susan B. Anthony to take
the initiatory step which led to the creation of the Board of
Lady Managers. She had invitations sent to women of official and
social position to meet in the Riggs House parlors to consider
this matter, in December, 1889. At this meeting Mrs. Conger, wife
of Senator Omar D. Conger of Michigan, was made chairman, and
Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, secretary. Miss Anthony was not
present, fearing lest her well-known radical views might hinder
the progress of affairs in the direction she wished them to take,
but she restlessly walked about her room in the hotel anxiously
awaiting the result.

Several meetings followed this and a committee was appointed to
wait upon Congress, asking that the commission should consist of
both men and women. Meanwhile the World's Fair Bill had been
brought before the House and Miss Anthony soon saw that there
would not be time for this committee to act. She therefore
prepared petitions, sent them to women in official life and asked
them to obtain signatures of official people.[100] On the
strength of these petitions there was added to the bill, in
March, 1890, an amendment providing for the appointment of women
on the Board.

Miss Anthony's self-effacement was perhaps the wisest thing under
the circumstances, for the Board, as appointed, being unconnected
with woman suffrage, proved an immense source of education to the
conservative women of the whole world--an education not needed by
the radical women of our own ranks. I think the time has surely
come when the truth of this history should be known to all.

The election of officers resulted in Miss Anthony's receiving
for president 139 out of 140 possible votes; Miss Shaw fo