and amendments offered and the discussion raged for two hours.
Dr. Shaw spoke strongly against the resolution and finally it was
defeated by a large majority. Later Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch of
Chicago offered a resolution which after several amendments read: "We
re-affirm our non-partisan attitude concerning national political
parties but this policy does not preclude the right of any member to
work against any candidate who opposes woman suffrage, nor shall it
refer to the personal attitude of enfranchised women." This was
carried enthusiastically. A resolution by Mrs. J. Claude Bedford
(Penn.) for a vigorous publicity campaign to make clear the
association's non-partisan policy was passed.
There had been such marked increase of public opinion in favor of
woman suffrage in the southern States and so many of their able women
had come into the association that a "Dixie evening" had been
arranged. Mrs. Catt presided and the following program was presented:
Master Words--Mrs. Minnie Fisher Cunningham, president Texas Woman
Suffrage Association; Kentucky and Her Constitution--Mrs. Thomas
Jefferson Smith, president Kentucky Equal Rights Association; The
Evolution of Woman--Mrs. Eugene Reilley, vice-president General
Federation of Women's Clubs and vice-president North Carolina Woman
Suffrage Association; Progress of Today and Traditions of
Yesterday--Mrs. Edward McGehee, president Mississippi Federation of
Women's Clubs; For Woman Herself--Mrs. Lila Mead Valentine, president
Virginia Equal Suffrage League; The Southern Temperament as Related to
Woman Suffrage--Mrs. Guilford Dudley, president Tennessee Equal
Suffrage Association, Inc.; Real Americanism--Mrs. T. T. Cotnam,
vice-president Arkansas Woman Suffrage Association. Southern women
have a natural gift of oratory and the audience was delightfully
entertained. But three of these addresses were published and space can
be given only to brief extracts.
"There is in America today," Mrs. Cotnam said, "a large class of
people who are restless and dissatisfied and are smarting under the
injustice of being governed without their consent. This is a class
with the blood of the Pilgrim mothers in their veins--of those who
cheerfully endured untold hardships as the price of liberty; a class
with the blood of the Revolutionary fathers in their veins--of those
who gave their lives that their children might be free; a class who
are the rightful joint heirs with all the people
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