4
ATTIC WORK-ROOMS 910
MARY S. AND SUSAN B. ANTHONY 916
ANTHONY FAMILY AT REUNION 938
AT THE OLD HOMESTEAD 942
QUAKER MEETING-HOUSE, ADAMS, MASS 946

CHAPTER XXX.

POLITICAL CANDIDATES--WRITING THE HISTORY.

1880-1881.

During her May lecture trip Miss Anthony was formulating a scheme for a
series of conventions, opening and closing with a great mass meeting,
which should influence the national political conventions to recognize
in their platforms the rights of woman. As usual most of the women
opposed this plan and as usual Miss Anthony carried the day. The
following letters to Mrs. Spencer, national secretary, will serve as
specimens of hundreds which she wrote with her own hand, before every
similar occasion:

I want the rousingest rallying cry ever put on paper--first, to
call women by the thousand to Chicago; and second, to get every one
who can not go there to send a postal card to the mass convention,
saying she wants the Republicans to put a Sixteenth Amendment
pledge in their platform. Don't you see that if we could have a
mass meeting of 2,000 or 3,000 earnest women, June 2, and then
receive 10,000 postals from women all over the country, what a
tremendous influence we could bring to bear on the Republican
convention, June 3? We can get Farwell Hall for $40 a day, and I
think would do well to engage it for the 2d and 3d, then we could
make it our headquarters--sleep in it even, if we couldn't get any
other places.

Besides this, I want to make the best possible use of all our
speakers between June 3 and 21, when we shall have a mass meeting
in Cincinnati, the day before the Democratic convention. My
proposition is that I, as vice-president-at-large, call conventions
of two days each at a number of cities. We could divide our
speakers and thus fill in the entire two weeks between Chicago and
Cincinnati with capital good work. How does the plan strike you?
Can we summon the women from the vasty deeps--or distances? Can we
get 5,000 or 10,000 to send on their postals? Do the petitions
still come in? How many thousands of appeals and documents have you
had printed and how many have