and Mrs. Upton is with her.[30] Our
vice-president-at-large will speak to you on What Cheer?"

Dr. Shaw said that once when she was travelling about the prairies of
Iowa she met a woman who was always referring to her home town "What
Cheer," and when she was asked to give a title to her address she
could think of nothing better. She continued: "There are no problems
so difficult to understand as those of our own time, because of the
lack of perspective. The arrogant and insistent and noisy things press
to the front and the silent and eternal fall into the rear. But as
time passes it is as when we climb a mountain--we gradually rise to
where we can see over the foothills and everything appears in its
proper place and proportion. Out of the present, its arrogant
militarism, its sordid commercialism and worship of gold, is there
anything to give us cheer and hope for tomorrow? There never was
greater reason for hope for humanity. Underlying all the tumult and
disorder of our time is one grand, golden thought, that of the human
brotherhood of the world. There never was a democracy comparable to
ours, faulty as it is and hopeless as it appears to some. Though the
ideal does not seem to impress itself upon the world, yet in the
silence it is there.... Today is the best this world has ever seen.
Tomorrow will be still better."

Miss Gordon spoke on A Sustaining Faith, showing that from labor, from
all forms of social service and from countless sources was converging
the demand for the reform which the suffrage association was seeking.
Miss Blackwell (Mass.) talked briefly as always but clearly and
convincingly on The New Woman. Miss Laura Clay (Ky.) began her address
on Dimes: "As an auditor I have been going over our treasurer's books.
Usually such books are mere debits and credits but in ours those stiff
rows of figures tell many beautiful things--the sacrifices of the poor
and the generosity of the rich--but best of all are the 'dimes'
because they are the dues paid to the association. They bear the
figure of Liberty and they stand for it.... These dimes are inspiring,
for they represent our membership when we gather here from the four
corners of the nation. Therefore I rejoice over these thousands and
thousands, each with a human heart behind it."

"No woman has a record of greater faithfulness in this cause," Mrs.
Catt said in introducing Mrs. Mary J. Coggeshall, who began her
remarks on Precedents by saying: "I come f