okane, Washington. Here
the Chamber of Commerce had appropriated $500 for their entertainment.
They were presented with buttons and badges and taken in automobiles
through the beautiful residence district, the handsome grounds of the
three colleges and to the picturesque Falls. Then they saw the fine
exhibits in the Chamber of Commerce and were taken to the Amateur
Athletic Club, whose facilities for rest and recreation were placed at
their disposal. An elaborate banquet followed with Mrs. May Arkwright
Hutton, president of the Spokane Equal Suffrage Club, presiding. Mrs.
Emma Smith De Voe, president of the State Suffrage Association,
welcomed them to Washington, and Mayor N. S. Pratt to the city. "I
have welcomed many organizations to Spokane," he said, "but none with
so much pleasure as this. My belief in equal suffrage is no new
conviction; I have voted for it twice and hope soon to do so again.
The coming of equal rights for women is the inevitable result of
progress and enlightenment." He presented Dr. Shaw with a gavel made
of wood from the four suffrage States bound together with a band of
Idaho silver and expressed the hope that when she used it to open the
convention in Seattle the sound would be like "the shot heard round
the world."

The account in the _Woman's Journal_ said: "Dr. Shaw, in returning
thanks, said: 'It is an apt simile, for the blow will be struck on the
Pacific Coast and it needs to be heard to the Atlantic and not only
from the west to the east but from the north to the south. I hope it
will be answered by men who, having known themselves what freedom is,
wish to give women the benefits of it also. The only man who can be in
any way excused for wanting to withhold freedom from women is the man
who is himself a slave.' She recalled the times when the suffragists
were offered not banquets but abuse and compared them to the pioneer
days of clearing the forest. She closed with a beautiful tribute to
the pioneer mothers and called upon the men to pay their debt to them
next November."

Mrs. Villard, recalling here also her visit of more than a quarter of
a century before, said in part: "Never could I have believed that such
changes could have been wrought since that historic train. Then there
was nothing at Spokane but Indians and cowboys and the beautiful
Falls. I am glad you want women to share the full life of the city.
'The woman's cause is man's.' This movement is as wide as the world
and