Part 29

Following the dinner there was a large public meeting, at which Miss Anthony and I were to speak. Mrs. Jenkins, who was president of the Suffrage Association of the state, presided and introduced us to the assemblage. Then she added: "I have introduced you ladies to your audience. Now I would like to introduce your audience to you." She began with the two Senators and the member of Congress, then introduced the Governor, the Lieutenant-Governor, the state Superintendent of Education, and numerous city and state officials. As she went on Miss Anthony grew more and more excited, and when the introductions were over, she said: "This is the first time I have ever seen an audience assembled for woman suffrage made up of the public officials of a state. No one can ever persuade me now that men respect women without political power as much as they respect women who have it; for certainly in no other state in the Union would it be possible to gather so many public officials under one roof to listen to the addresses of women."

The following spring we again went West, with Mrs. Catt, Lucy Anthony, Miss Hay and Miss Sweet, her secretary, to carry on the Pacific coast campaign of '96, arranged by Mrs. Cooper and her daughter Harriet, of Oakland--both women of remarkable executive ability. Headquarters were secured in San Francisco, and Miss Hay was put in charge, associated with a large group of California women. It was the second time in the history of campaigns--the first being in New York--that all the money to carry on the work was raised by the people of the state.

The last days of the campaign were extremely interesting, and one of their important events was that the Hon. Thomas Reed, then Speaker of the House of Representatives, for the first time came out publicly for suffrage. Mr. Reed had often expressed himself privately as in favor of the Cause--but he had never made a public statement for us. At Oakland, one day, the indefatigable and irresistible "Aunt Susan" caught him off his guard by persuading his daughter, Kitty Reed, who was his idol, to ask him to say just one word in favor of our amendment. When he arose we did not know whether he had promised what she asked, and as his speech progressed our hearts sank lower and lower, for all he said was remote from our Cause. But he ended with these words:

"There is an amendment of the constitution pending, granting suffrage to women. The women of California ought to have suffrage. The men of California ought to give it to them--and the next speaker, Dr. Shaw, will tell you why."

The word was spoken. And though it was not a very strong word, it came from a strong man, and therefore helped us.

Election day, as usual, brought its surprises and revelations. Mrs. Cooper asked her Chinese cook how the Chinese were voting--i. e., the native-born Chinamen who were entitled to vote--and he replied, blithely, "All Chinamen vote for Billy McKee and 'NO' to women!" It is an interesting fact that every Chinese vote was cast against us.

All day we went from one to another of the polling-places, and I shall always remember the picture of Miss Anthony and the wife of Senator Sargent wandering around the polls arm in arm at eleven o'clock at night, their tired faces taking on lines of deeper depression with every minute; for the count was against us. However, we made a fairly good showing. When the final counts came in we found that we had won the state from the north down to Oakland, and from the south up to San Francisco; but there was not a sufficient majority to overcome the adverse votes of San Francisco and Oakland. With more than 230,000 votes cast, we were defeated by only 10,000 majority. In San Francisco the saloon element and the most aristocratic section of the city made an equal showing against us, while the section occupied by the middle working-class was largely in favor of our amendment. I dwell especially on this campaign, partly because such splendid work was done by the women of California, and also because, during the same election, Utah and Idaho granted full suffrage to women. This gave us four suffrage states--Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho--and we prepared for future struggles with very hopeful hearts.

It was during this California campaign, by the way, that I unwittingly caused much embarrassment to a worthy young man. At a mass-meeting held in San Francisco, Rabbi Vorsanger, who was not in favor of suffrage for women, advanced the heartening theory that in a thousand years more they might possibly be ready for it. After a thousand years of education for women, of physically developed women, of uncorseted women, he said, we might have the ideal woman, and could then begin to talk about freedom for her.

When the rabbi sat down there was a shout from the audience for me to answer him, but all I said was that the ideal woman would be rather lonely, as it would certainly take another thousand years to develop an ideal man capable of being a mate for her. On the following night Prof. Howard Griggs, of Stanford University, made a speech on the modern woman--a speech so admirably thought out and delivered that we were all delighted with it. When he had finished the audience again called on me, and I rose and proceeded to make what my friends frankly called "the worst break" of my experience. Rabbi Vorsanger's ideal woman was still in my mind, and I had been rather hard on the men in my reply to the rabbi the night before; so now I hastened to give this clever young man his full due. I said that though the rabbi thought it would take a thousand years to make an ideal woman, I believed that, after all, it might not take as long to make the ideal man. We had something very near it in a speaker who could reveal such ability, such chivalry, and such breadth of view as Professor Griggs had just shown that he possessed.

That night I slept the sleep of the just and the well-meaning, and it was fortunate I did, for the morning newspapers had a surprise for me that called for steady nerves and a sense of humor. Across the front page of every one of them ran startling head-lines to this effect:

DR. SHAW HAS FOUND HER IDEAL MAN The Prospects Are That She Will Remain in California

Professor Griggs was young enough to be my son, and he was already married and the father of two beautiful children; but these facts were not permitted to interfere with the free play of fancy in journalistic minds. For a week the newspapers were filled with all sorts of articles, caricatures, and editorials on my ideal man, which caused me much annoyance and some amusement, while they plunged Professor Griggs into an abysmal gloom. In the end, however, the experience proved an excellent one for him, for the publicity attending his speech made him decide to take up lecturing as a profession, which he eventually did with great success. But neither of us has yet heard the last of the Ideal Man episode. Only a few years ago, on his return to California after a long absence, one of the leading Sunday newspapers of the state heralded Professor Griggs's arrival by publishing a full-page article bearing his photograph and mine and this flamboyant heading:

SHE MADE HIM And Dr. Shaw's Ideal Man Became the Idol of American Women and Earns $30,000 a Year

We had other unusual experiences in California, and the display of affluence on every side was not the least impressive of them. In one town, after a heavy rain, I remember seeing a number of little boys scraping the dirt from the gutters, washing it, and finding tiny nuggets of gold. We learned that these boys sometimes made two or three dollars a day in this way, and that the streets of the town--I think it was Marysville--contained so much gold that a syndicate offered to level the whole town and repave the streets in return for the right to wash out the gold. This sounds like the kind of thing Americans tell to trustful visitors from foreign lands, but it is quite true. Nuggets, indeed, were so numerous that at one of our meetings, when we were taking up a collection, I cheerfully suggested that our audience drop a few into the box, as we had not had a nugget since we reached the state. There were no nuggets in the subsequent collection, but there was a note which read: "If Dr. Shaw will accept a gold nugget, I will see that she does not leave town without one." I read this aloud, and added, "I have never refused a gold nugget in my life."

The following day brought me a pin made of a very beautiful gold nugget, and a few days later another Californian produced a cluster of smaller nuggets which he had washed out of a panful of earth and insisted on my accepting half of them. I was not accustomed to this sort of generosity, but it was characteristic of the spirit of the state. Nowhere else, during our campaign experiences, were we so royally treated in every way. As a single example among many, I may mention that Mrs. Leland Stanford once happened to be on a train with us and to meet Miss Anthony. As a result of this chance encounter she gave our whole party passes on all the lines of the Southern Pacific Railroad, for use during the entire campaign. Similar generosity was shown us on every side, and the question of finance did not burden us from the beginning to the end of the California work.

In our Utah and Idaho campaigns we had also our full share of new experiences, and of these perhaps the most memorable to me was the sermon I preached in the Mormon Tabernacle at Salt Lake City. Before I left New York the Mormon women had sent me the invitation to preach this sermon, and when I reached Salt Lake City and the so-called "Gentile" women heard of the plan, they at once invited me to preach to the "Gentiles" on the evening of the same Sunday, in the Salt Lake City Opera House.

On the morning of the sermon I approached the Mormon Tabernacle with much more trepidation than I usually experienced before entering a pulpit. I was not sure what particular kind of trouble I would get into, but I had an abysmal suspicion that trouble of some sort lay in wait for me, and I shivered in the anticipation of it. Fortunately, my anxiety was not long drawn out. I arrived only a few moments before the hour fixed for the sermon, and found the congregation already assembled and the Tabernacle filled with the beautiful music of the great organ. On the platform, to which I was escorted by several leading dignitaries of the church, was the characteristic Mormon arrangement of seats. The first row was occupied by the deacons, and in the center of these was the pulpit from which the deacons preach. Above these seats was a second row, occupied by ordained elders, and there they too had their own pulpit. The third row was occupied by, the bishops and the highest dignitaries of the church, with the pulpit from which the bishops preach; and behind them all, an effective human frieze, was the really wonderful Mormon choir.

As I am an ordained elder in my church, I occupied the pulpit in the middle row of seats, with the deacons below me and the bishops just behind. Scattered among the congregation were hundreds of "Gentiles" ready to leap mentally upon any concession I might make to the Mormon faith; while the Mormons were equally on the alert for any implied criticism of them and their church. The problem of preaching a sermon which should offer some appeal to both classes, without offending either, was a perplexing one, and I solved it to the best of my ability by delivering a sermon I had once given in my own church to my own people. When I had finished I was wholly uncertain of its effect, but at the end of the services one of the bishops leaned toward me from his place in the rear, and, to my mingled horror and amusement, offered me this tribute, "That is one of the best Mormon sermons ever preached in this Tabernacle."

I thanked him, but inwardly I was aghast. What had I said to give him such an impression? I racked my brain, but could recall nothing that justified it. I passed the day in a state of nervous apprehension, fully expecting some frank criticism from the "Gentiles" on the score of having delivered a Mormon sermon to ingratiate myself into the favor of the Mormons and secure their votes for the constitutional amendment. But nothing of the kind was said. That evening, after the sermon to the "Gentiles," a reception was given to our party, and I drew my first deep breath when the wife of a well-known clergyman came to me and introduced herself in these words:

"My husband could not come here to-night, but he heard your sermon this morning. He asked me to tell you how glad he was that under such unusual conditions you held so firmly to the teachings of Christ."

The next day I was still more reassured. A reception was given us at the home of one of Brigham Young's daughters, and the receiving-line was graced by the presiding elder of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He was a bluff and jovial gentleman, and when he took my hand he said, warmly, "Well, Sister Shaw, you certainly gave our Mormon friends the biggest dose of Methodism yesterday that they ever got in their lives."

After this experience I reminded myself again that what Frances Willard so frequently said is true; All truth is our truth when it has reached our hearts; we merely rechristen it according to our individual creeds.

During the visit I had an interesting conversation with a number of the younger Mormon women. I was to leave the city on a midnight train, and about twenty of them, including four daughters of Brigham Young, came to my hotel to remain with me until it was time to go to the station. They filled the room, sitting around in school-girl fashion on the floor and even on the bed. It was an unusual opportunity to learn some things I wished to know, and I could not resist it.

"There are some questions I would like to ask you," I began, "and one or two of them may seem impertinent. But they won't be asked in that spirit--and please don't answer any that embarrass you."

They exchanged glances, and then told me to ask as many questions as I wished.

"First of all," I said, "I would like to know the real attitude toward polygamy of the present generation of Mormon women. Do you all believe in it?"

They assured me that they did.

"How many of you," I then asked, "are polygamous wives?"