signing my own death-warrant;" and in a letter to a friend she said, "I feel a great, calm sadness like that of a mother binding out a dear child that she could not support." To the public she kept the same brave, unruffled exterior, but in a private letter, written a short time afterwards, is told in a few sentences a story which makes the heart ache:
My financial recklessness has been much talked of. Let me tell you in what this recklessness consists: When there was need of greater outlay, I never thought of curtailing the amount of work to lessen the amount of cash demanded, but always doubled and quadrupled the efforts to raise the necessary sum; rushing for contributions to every one who had professed love or interest for the cause. If it were 20,000 tracts for Kansas, the thought never entered my head to stint the number—only to tramp up and down Broadway for advertisements to pay for them. If to meet expenses of The Revolution, it was not to pinch clerks or printers, but to make a foray upon some money-king. None but the Good Father can ever begin to know the terrible struggle of those years. I am not complaining, for mine is but the fate of almost every originator or pioneer who ever has opened up a way. I have the joy of knowing that I showed it to be possible to publish an out-and-out woman's paper, and taught other, women to enter in and reap where I had sown.
Heavy debts are still due, every dollar of which I intend to pay, and I am tugging away, lecturing amid these burning suns, for no other reason than to keep pulling down, hundred by hundred, that tremendous pile. I sanguinely hope to cancel this debt in two years of hard work, and cheerfully look forward to the turning of every possible dollar into that channel. If you today should ask me to choose between the possession of $25,000 and the immense work accomplished by my Revolution during the time in which I sank that amount, I should choose the work done—not the cash in hand. So, you see, I don't groan or murmur—not a bit of it; but for the good name of humanity, I would have liked to see the moneyed men and women rally around the seed-sowers.
Parker Pillsbury wrote her after he returned home: "No one could do better than you have done. If any complain, ask them what they did to help you carry the paper. I am glad you are relieved of a load too heavy for you to bear. Worry yourself no more. Work of course you will, but let there be no further anxiety and nervousness. Suffrage is growing with the oaks. The whirling spheres will usher in the day of its triumph at just the right time, but your full meed of praise will have to be sung over your grave."
The motto of The Revolution, "The True Republic—Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less," was succeeded by "What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder." It was transformed into a literary and society journal, established in elegant headquarters at Brooklyn, inaugurated with a fashionable reception, and conducted by Mrs. Bullard for eighteen months, when she tired of it, or her father tired of advancing money, and it passed into other hands.
When Miss Anthony had her accounts audited by an expert, he stated that The Revolution was in a better financial condition than was the New York Independent at the end of its first five years. She had just begun to realize her power as a lyceum lecturer and was in constant demand at large prices. The last two months before giving up the paper, she sent in from her lectures, above all her expenses, $1,300. She always felt that, with this source of revenue, she could have sustained and in time put it on a paying basis, as her subscription list was rapidly increasing, she had learned the newspaper business, and The Revolution was gaining the confidence of the public. But the experience came too late and she was driven to the wall—not a single friend would longer give her money, assistance or encouragement to continue the paper. To this day, she will take up the bound volumes with caressing fingers, touch them with pathetic tenderness, and pore over their pages with loving reverence, as one reads old letters when the hands which penned them are still forever.
Miss Anthony did not waste a single day in mourning over her great disappointment. In fact, between May 18, when she agreed to give up The Revolution, and May 22, when the transfer actually was made, she went to Hornellsville and lectured, receiving $150 for that one evening. There are not many instances on record where a woman starts out alone to earn the money with which to pay a debt of $10,000. Very few of the advocates of woman suffrage contributed a dollar toward the payment of this debt, which had nothing in it of a personal nature but had been made entirely in the effort to advance the cause. Miss Anthony worked unceasingly through winter's cold and summer's heat, lecturing sometimes under private auspices, sometimes under those of a bureau, and herself arranging for unengaged nights. As she had all her expenses to pay and continued to contribute from her own pocket whenever funds were needed for suffrage work, it was six years before "she could look the whole world in the face for she owed not any man."
She started at once on a western tour, lecturing through Ohio, Kansas and Illinois, speaking in the Methodist church at Evanston, June 3, 1870. Dr. E.O. Haven, president of the university, (afterwards Bishop) in presenting her endorsed woman suffrage. At Bloomington she held a debate with a young professor from the State Normal School. The manager asked if she would take $100 instead of half the receipts, as agreed on. She replied that if the prospects were so good as to warrant him in making this offer, she was just Yankee enough to take her chances. This was a shrewd decision, as her half amounted to $250. The professor opposed the enfranchisement of women because they could not fight. As is the case invariably with men who make this objection, he was a very diminutive specimen, and Miss Anthony could not resist observing as she commenced her speech: "The professor talks about the physical disabilities of women; why, I could take him in my arms and lift him on and off this platform as easily as a mother would her baby!" Of course this put the audience in a fine humor.
In every place she was entertained by representative people and received many social courtesies. She returned to Rochester July 27, spent just twelve hours at home, then hastened eastward, travelling by night in order to reach the Saratoga convention on the 28th. This was held under the auspices of the New York State Association, and managed by the secretary, Matilda Joslyn Gage. Miss Anthony was paid $100, for the first time in the history of conventions. Mrs. Gage wrote: "She is heavily burdened with debt, no one has made so great sacrifices all these years, and she deserves the money." During the summer she sent to a friend in England this summing up of the condition of the suffrage movement in the United States:
The secret of the present inaction is that all our best suffrage men are in the Republican party and must keep in line with its interests, make no demands beyond its possibilities, its safety, its sure success. Hence, just now, while that party is trembling lest it should fall into the minority, and thus give place to the Democracy in 1872, it dares not espouse woman suffrage. So our friends quietly drop our demand on Congress for a Sixteenth Amendment, since to press that body to a vote would compel the Republican members to show their hands; and if those who have in private spoken for woman suffrage should not make a false public record, the number in favor would commit the majority of their party to our question; and by so doing give its opponents fresh opportunity to appeal to the ignorant masses, which must inevitably throw it out of power. The extension of the ballot to woman is a question of intelligence and culture, and is sure to have enrolled against it every narrow, prejudiced, small-brained man in all classes. This being the state of things, our movement is at a dead-lock. Practical action, political action, therefore, is almost hopeless until after the presidential election of 1872; and after that for still another four years, unless the Republican party should be defeated and the Democracy come into power.
Just as soon as the Republicans are out of power, they will betake themselves to the study of principles and begin to preach and promise. Hence I devoutly pray without ceasing for the overthrow of that purse-proud, corrupt, cowardly party; not that I expect from the Democracy anything better than their antecedents promise, but that I know such chastisement, such retirement, is the only means by which conscience and courage can be injected into the heads and hearts of the Republicans, the only way to make them see the political necessity of enfranchising the women of the country, and thereby securing their gratitude and through it their vote to place and hold that party in power.
Then as to our woman suffrage organizations: There are first, the Cleveland movement with all the
