A HALF CENTURY OF PROGRESS.

BY MARY LOWE DICKINSON, PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES.

In the month of June of last year there went out from the president of the National Council of Women of the United States the following invitation, which we venture to repeat, as indicating as fully as any later utterance the significance and scope of the occasion to which it refers:

Believing that the progress made by women in the last half-century along religous, philanthropic, intellectual, political and industrial lines may be still further promoted by a more general acknowledgment of their efforts and successes, it has been decided to hold in New York City a gathering whose object shall be to give deserved recognition of woman's past achievement.

As an appropriate time for such a celebration, the eightieth birthday of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton has been chosen. Her half-century of pioneer work for the advancement of women makes her name a natural inspiration for such an occasion, and her life an appropriate object of the congratulation and homage of the world.

The celebration will take place under the auspices of the National Council of Women of the United States, which is composed of twenty national organizations. All affiliated societies, organizations outside the Council, and interested individuals are hereby cordially invited to unite with the Council in grateful recognition of the debt which the women of the present owe to the pioneers of the past.

From the supreme interest in the enfranchisement of woman, the ideas and influence of Mrs. Stanton and her great co-worker, Miss Anthony, have permeated all fields of progress, until these leaders have become the natural centre of that group of pioneers in education and philanthropy, in the professions, the industries and the arts whom we hope to bring together on this occasion. We aim to show to the younger generation, not alone the work that has been wrought by and for women, but the world's great women workers whose struggles and sacrifices have brought nearer a new day of truer freedom and nobler development for the race.

Naturally the invitation reached a multitude of individuals thoughtful enough to recognize the relation of woman's progress to human progress. From men and women on both sides of the ocean, whose names are identified with efforts to lift humanity to the highest type of moral, social and intellectual life, it brought responses expressing warmest sympathy with the proposed reunion. Similar responses came, not only from the organizations represented in the National Council, but from scores of

(By permission, from copyright photograph by G. G. Rockwood, New York.)

others not yet affiliated therewith, and each organization, whether composed of men and women, or of women only, was invited to representation on a general committee, from whose members were chosen special committees who, with the assistance of additions from the patron list, prosecuted the local work. That patron list, too long for insertion here, included many names from both continents, whose weight depended not upon social standing, but upon records of coöperation in educational, philanthropic or political work, such as had for its object the betterment of human conditions and the development of the race.

As the above invitation indicates, the reunion had a fourfold function. First of all, it was intended to emphasize a great principle of truth and justice, and to throw that principle into grand relief by showing the loftiness of character that had resulted from its embodiment in a grandly unique personality. The world naturally thinks of the personality before it thinks of the principle. It has at least so much unconscious reverence and courtesy left as to honor a noble woman even when failing to rightly apprehend a noble cause. And yet it was the principle which, within the woman, had operated as a mighty moral force, guiding her efforts and dominanting her powers for more than half a century. It was the principle, acting like the little leaven within the mass of accumulated circumstances and inert conditions, which Mrs. Stanton, of all women, would desire to see emphasized and exalted to its true place in the minds of loyal women and admiring

men.

Appreciation and enthusiasm for this grand principle of human equality and the grand personality that fought for it ran quite too many years at our feet in a sluggish, creeping stream, whose flowing was looked down upon with indifference or scorn. In these later years the current has risen like a tide, moving steadily upward, flooding many hearts with loyalty and stirring many lips to utterance. To afford this tardy loyalty its proper outlet and expression, to render more tangible and definite all vague and hesitant sympathy, to crystallize the growing sentiment in favor of human freedom of body and brain and soul, to give youth the opportunity to reverence the glory of age, to give hearts their utterance in word and song, was perhaps the most popular purpose of the reunion. In other words, it gave an opportunity for those who revered Mrs. Stanton as a queen among women, to show their reverence, and to all others an opportunity to recognize the work her

life had wrought, and to see in it an epitome of the progress of a century.

In the third place, the reunion was an expression and illustration of the distinctive idea of the National Council, which aims to give recognition and honor to all good in all human effort without demanding uniformity of opinion as a basis of approval or coöperation. It claims and acts upon the fact of possible unity of service for humanity, notwithstanding differences of creed and conviction and methods and plans.

Of the numerous organizations which separately declared their sympathy with the movement to honor Mrs. Stanton's birthday, by a reunion of women workers and a consideration of the sources and value of woman's work, hardly any two were alike in views, in scope or in practice, yet all could meet together in loyalty to a great principle, and in honor to a great personality. Some societies, indeed, which had never before found common ground enough to give them a place to stand amicably side by side, met most cordially upon this plane. Not even the shadow of prejudice could obscure their appreciation of that which appeals to all humanity as distinctively noble, and unity of feeling on this one point seemed for the time being strong enough to sweep away all trace of doubt of one another, and all sense of difference in deed and creed. The things that separate shrank back into the shadows where they belong, and all hearts brave enough to think, and tender enough to feel, found it easy to unite in homage to a life which had known a half century of struggle to lift humanity from bondage and womanhood from shame.

I have said the object of the reunion was fourfold. Aside from Mrs. Stanton and her work, its chief interest centered around the large band of pioneers composed of women who in one line or another of helpful work, had given the best years of their lives to labors that tended to the betterment of mankind. The gathering meant, for them, aside from all deeper significance, an opportunity to take one another by the hand, to look into one another's faces. Very sweet faces many of them were, too,

"Wearing marks of age and sorrow,
As the midnight wears its stars."

In the general plan of the celebration it was hoped to gather together representatives of every phase of woman's work. Lack of time would, of course, prevent eleborate records of the progress in each particular line during the

last half century; but those most familiar with each department had prepared outline sketches of progress in their own especial field, and it was intended that brief abstracts from these records should be presented at the celebration.

The progress of woman along educational, reform, industrial or artistic lines has been by ways both long and hard, how hard they only know, who, never once turning back when the road grew thorny and steep, opened the track for the later pilgrims who have followed in their steps. Through what currents of opposition, varying in speed and force, through what deserts of ignorance, over what mountains of prejudice, across what streams of adverse criticism they made their way, with little beyond the light of truth and scarcely the dream of freedom for a guide, driven by the innate longing and love for both truth and freedom, rather than by any hope of securing it, they pressed onward with the ultimate result of a new and vital public sentiment, a new and wider outlook, new powers and possibilities, new projects; a decided gain in fact, on all that meant new hope for humanity because it meant new life for womankind.

And this reunion was the first general recognition, the first almost universal frank acknowledgement of the debt the present owes to the past. It was the first effort to show the extent to which later development has been inspired and made possible by the freedom to think and work, claimed in that earlier time by women like Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony and many others whose names stand as synonyms of noble service for the race. To those who looked at the reunion from this point of view it could not fail of inspiration. He who stands on any height, material, intellectual or spiritual, gains strength to go higher still by a backward glance which shows him that nothing began in himself, that for every stepping-stone by the way he is a debtor to one who went before. Our whole complex problem, and our last half century of progress therein, lost nothing of dignity when, on this night of recognition, students young and old listened while the president of one of our noblest colleges for women traced eloquently the relation between present and past conditions of woman student life, proving our debt to the noble women who knew what it was in earlier days, first to plead, and then to knock, and last to batter at the brazen gates of prejudice and tradition which shut them out of the knowledge they desired.

For the followers in lines of philanthropic work to look in