I.

NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1912.

The Forty-fourth annual convention, which met in Witherspoon Building,
Philadelphia, Nov. 21-26, 1912, celebrated three important victories.
At the general election in the early part of the month, Oregon,
Arizona and Kansas had amended their constitutions and conferred equal
suffrage on women by large majority votes and the result in Michigan
was still in doubt. It was the sentiment of the country that the
eastward sweep of the movement was now fully under way. There was a
new and vibrant tone in the Call and in the speeches and
proceedings.[72] The _Woman's Journal_ said in its account: "Another
new feature was the enormous crowds that turned out at the convention.
Evening after evening, in conservative Philadelphia, ten or a dozen
overflow meetings had to be held for the benefit of the people who
could not possibly get into the hall. At the Thanksgiving service on
Sunday afternoon, not only was the great Metropolitan Opera House
filled to its capacity but for blocks the street outside was jammed
with a seething crowd, eager to hear the illustrious speakers. It
looked more like an inauguration than like an old-fashioned suffrage
meeting."

There was a great out-door rally in Independence Square at the
beginning, such as had been witnessed many times on this historic spot
conducted by men but never before in the hands of women. Miss
Elizabeth Freeman was manager of this meeting, assisted by Miss Jane
Campbell, the Rev. Caroline Bartlett Crane, Mrs. Camilla von Klenze,
Mrs. Teresa Crowley and Miss Florence Allen. From five platforms over
forty well-known speakers demanded that the principles of the
Declaration of Independence signed in the ancient hall close by should
be applied to women and that the old bell should ring out liberty for
all and not for half the people. Mrs. Otis Skinner read the Women's
Declaration of Rights, which had been written by Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage in 1876 and
presented at the great centennial celebration in that very square,[73]
and a little ceremony was held in honor of Mrs. Charlotte Pierce of
Philadelphia, the only one then living who had signed it, with a
remembrance presented by Mrs. Anna Anthony Bacon.

The convention was noteworthy for the large number of distinguished
speakers on its program. On the opening afternoon, after a moment of
silent prayer in memory of Lucretia Mott, the welcome of the