Catt, Carrie Chapman Blackwell, Alice Stone 1895-1929 National-American Woman Suffrage Association. Honorary President: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 26 West 61st Street, New York President, Susan B. Anthony, Rochester, N.Y. Vice-President-at Large, Rev. Anna H. Shaw, Somerton, Philadelphia, Pa. Corresponding Secretary, Rachel Foster Avery, Somerton, Philadelphia, Pa. Recording Secretary, Alice Stone Blackwell, 3 Park Street, Boston, Mass. Treasurer, Harriet Taylor Upton, Warren, Ohio. Auditors: H. Augusta Howard, Georgia. Anna L. Diggs, Kansas. Chairman Committee on Organization, Carrie Chapman Catt, 183 "World Building," New York. Chairman Press Committee, Ellen Battelle Dietrick, 20 Lowell Street, Cambridge, Mass. Office of Chairman of Committee on Organization. June 7, 1895 My dear Miss Blackwell;- The matter concerning Mrs. Hamm-Fales was quite a revelation. I have been making some inquiries since your letter came. As nearly as I can find out, this suffrage press association was organized by Mrs. Fales because she couldn't get into the other one. She told me once that the Woman's Press Associatin in N.Y. amounted to nothing. I suppose she had good reason for thinking so. I find she is doing a great deal of work for reliable a papers and it is said she makes more money than any other woman reporter. It is said she makes $6,000 per year. She has now gone to Londodn to report the World's W.C.T.U. Her expenses are paid half by the Mail and Express, and half by the Atlanta Exposition. I don't know what she is to do for them that they can afford to do this but her best friend told me that. On my own account I know her reports are absolutely unreliable and it is questionable whether she is much of a help. For instance she not long ago published an interview with me of a quarter of a column. I had not seen her since I was at Atlanta to talk with her and the things I said I had never even thought. That sort of reporting will be apt to get us into trouble. I was glad you told me of it. She had just been put on the program of the N.Y. State Association to speak at their State Convention. Miss Mills who is on their program committee told me. It has not been given to the public yet. So I told her what you had said without giving any name as National-American Woman Suffrage Association. Honorary President: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 26 West 61st Street, New York President, Susan B. Anthony, Rochester, N.Y. Vice-President-at Large, Rev. Anna H. Shaw, Somerton, Philadelphia, Pa. Corresponding Secretary, Rachel Foster Avery, Somerton, Philadelphia, Pa. Recording Secretary, Alice Stone Blackwell, 3 Park Street, Boston, Mass. Treasurer, Harriet Taylor Upton, Warren, Ohio. Auditors: H. Augusta Howard, Georgia. Anna L. Diggs, Kansas. Chairman Committee on Organization, Carrie Chapman Catt, 183 "World Building," New York. Chairman Press Committee, Ellen Battelle Dietrick, 20 Lowell Street, Cambridge, Mass. Office of Chairman of Committee on Organization. authority. The name will come off and we will be saved a criticism thereby. It is sad that such people are always getting in our way. I am informed that my name is on the list of members of that suffrage association or rather press Association. If it is I was never invited and never gave my consent. I will make more diligent inquiries and see if is likely to harm us. Concerning the clubs:- We are just copying them, as fast as they come, into a book. We will send you the complete list with pleasures. I think you are mistaken about any mistreatment of the Journal by any of the Staff except possibly the two at the head. Mrs. Upton I know is very fond of you personally and I know she literally hates Mrs. Colby. So I am sure she doesn't discriminate against you. I am going to write Mr. Blackwell about the offer of the Journal to Cala and Idaho. It is so generous I fear it would break you all up. I wish we could do this as a National body for those states. I am going to send a letter for next week sure. I wish I could do more newspaper work but it isn't in me. I should write oftener. Thank you for the names in those Western States. They will be quite a help to us. Of course you know that the reason we want the names of local clubs is to put the prospectus of Study in their hands. By the way, I have been wondering for some time how well organized you were in Boston. I know you have a strong Club. What would you think of sections in that club of those who wanted to study. I think you could get a good many new members in National-American Woman Suffrage Association. Honorary President: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 26 West 61st Street, New York. President, Susan B. Anthony, Rochester, NY Vice-President-at-Large, Rev. Anna H. Shaw, Somerton, Philadelphia, PA Corresponding Secretary, Rachel Foster Avery, Somerton, Philadelphia, PA Recording Secretary, Alice Stone Blackwell, 3 Park Street, Boston, Mass Treasurer, Harriet Taylor Upton, Warren, Ohio Auditors: H. Augusta Howard, Georgia Anna L. Diggs, Kansas Chairman Committee on Organization, Carrie Chapman Catt, 183 "World Building," New York. Chairman Press Committee, Ellen Battelle Dietrick, 20 Lowell Street, Cambridge, Mass. OFFICE OF CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEE ON ORGANIZATION. this way. I very much desire to see the cities organized in this way. I have a secret ambition to have Mrs. Bradford of Denver come East to work in the cities. I would like to have her speak in parlor meetings and organize clubs for study. She was formerly a Boston woman. She is rather more of the refined order than any one we have I think unless politics has spoiled her. She was the Democratic candidate for Supt. of Schools in Colo last fall. It is quite a catch to get a Democratic Woman Suffragist. I thought if we could give her to cities for two weeks each she would do a world of good. What would you think of it in Boston? In Brooklyn and New York some very powerful oork was done in a series of parlor meetings. I know of no way in which more good work could be accomplished. We can get her I think for a salary and then add to that her travelling expenses and in that way find out how much to assign to each place. Let me know after you read the course of Study what you would think of it. With best wishes, I am Yours Sincerely, Carrie Chapman Catt When you get list of clubs we will indicate the new ones. I think it would pay you to write a brief letter to the new ones and urge personally to subscribe. With Alice Stone Blackwall's comments appended. A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE WOMAN CITIZEN presented by Carrie Chapman Catt April 19, 1927. Page 1 It is rarely possible to fix the exact date to which great human movements have begun. The woman movement is no exception to the rule. Affected by the stir of controversy concerning universal human rights which preceded the American Revolution, the rights of women became a lively and common topic of discussion among the intellectuals about 1760. Between that date and 1848 - 88 years - the records are complete enough to show that there was never a cessation of interest in this theme and that a steady extension of sympathy with the new ideas, a growing boldness of advocacy and a gradual acknowledgement of the definite wrongs of women slowly emerged. During the earlier part of this period, it must be remembered that no married woman could legally control her property or will it away. She held no guardianship over her children, and could not be a witness in court. If she worked for wages, they belonged to her husband. No organization of women existed, and attendance upon controversial or political meetings by women was as unheard of as public speaking. Women did not pray in prayer meetings, give testimony in the church, nor sing in choirs with limited exceptions. There was not yet anywhere in the world a college nor a high school open to women. It is necessary to recall this background in order to recognize the singularity of the fact that in the newspaper field women found an opportunity for expression afforded them nowhere else. It is alleged that the first daily newspaper in the world, the Daily Courant, was established and edited by a woman, Elizabeth Mallet, in London, March 1702. This fact amazes me. The first paper in America was The "Mass. Gazette and North Boston Newsletter". It was edited and published by the widow of the founder, Mrs. Margaret Draper, for two years after her husband's death and was the only paper which did not suspend publication when Boston was besieged by the British. This fact is startling. Page 2 The third paper to be established in the Colonies was "The Mercury" in Philadelphia, which, after the death of its founder, was continued by his widow, Mrs. Cornelia Bradford, for many years. The first newspaper in Rhode Island and the first in Maryland were established and edited by women, the first by Anna Franklin in 1732, the second by Anna K. Greene in 1767. The well known Courant of Hartford was edited by a woman in 1777. In New York City, Boston, Baltimore, and other cities, women edited papers during the earlier period, and between 1800 and 1848 such women as Frances Wright, Lydia Maria Child, and Margaret Fuller, edited and published newspapers. In proportion to the total number of publications at that date, the number edited and managed by women is the chief surprising feature of the period. The growth of the woman movement during this span of eighty-eight (88) years was climaxed by the first convention of women at Seneca Falls in 1848 wherein the grounds were laid for the long campaign that was to follow. Naturally, the newspapers sponsored by women, greatly increased from that date, each paper making a desperate, but in all cases short struggle for existence. In 1868 a paper of more character and purpose, called the "Revolution" was established by Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Parker Pillsbury. Its slogan was "Principle not policy, justice not favors, men their rights and nothing more, women their rights and nothing less." This paper had some pledges of financial backing from men friends of the cause and was really a venture of men. This fact, to- gether with the eminence and ability of its editors, gave the paper a prospect of success quite beyond any of its predecessors. It certainly aroused the nation and was widely commented upon by the press. It surely frightened the politicians badly and gave evidence that in time the threat of Abigail Adams to "foment a rebellion" might be carried out; Page 3 but, alas in two years the brave undertaking came to a tragic end. Its backers found the demands for money embarrassing and withdrew, leaving the paper in debt, chiefly to the printer for $10,000.00. Although Miss Anthony's responsibility for this debt was no greater than that of other editors and the backers, she assumed the entire responsibility and undertook to pay off the obligation by lectures for which she received $25 and out of which she paid her travelling expenses. She received a few contributions toward the enterprise and these, plus her earnings, enabled her to wipe out the debt and thus re-establish the somewhat injured repute of women in business, for although it was really a venture of men, the penalty of its failure was visited solely upon women. In its brief existence the Revolution recorded two important items, both more significant than threats of rebellion. 1. The vote was extended to women in the territory of Wyoming in 1869 and was the first political victory of the movement. 2. The unorganized, groping movement cohered sufficiently at last to produce two national organizations - the National Woman Suffrage Associated, organized in May 1869 with Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton as leaders; and the American Woman Suffrage Association, organized in November 1869 with Lucy Stone and her husband, H. B. Blackwell, as leaders. Although the movement had been driving straight forward for a hundred years to the inevitability of a national organization which would write into law the principles the long discussion had clarified, there was a split among the leaders when the time came, and two, instead of one organization, entered the field. The National Association would have had the Revolution as its organ had it lived, but its untimely death left the new association without a medium of public appeal. Page 4 In 1869 Mrs. Eliza J. Eddy of Rhode Island bequeathed $40,000.00 to assist the cause of woman suffrage, giving $20,000 to Susan B. Anthony and $20,000 to Lucy Stone. Mrs. Stone used her bequest to found the Woman's Journal, the first number appearing in January 1870. [*Alice Stone Blackwell states Lucy Stone founded Wom. Journal before getting Eddy bequest w. money the Blackwells contributed & raised among friends.*] The printed files of the Revolution and those of the Journal, altho the editorship passed from one group to the other, show little break in the continuity or the character of the educational campaign. In the Citizen office, the complete bound files of its ancestors are to be seen dating from January 1868 to 1927 - a period of 59 years - a monument built with great personal sacrifice by women to faith and confidence in the final and full emancipation of their sex. The Journal became the organ of the American Association whose energies largely centered around it. Apparently it at no time reached a self-supporting stage. After the bequest was exhausted, the annual deficit was met by occasional small bequests and contributions of friends. From January 1870 to June 1917, a period of 47 years, it never paused nor faltered. It soon outgrew the American Association and circulated widely among the members of the National Association as well. In 1890 the two associations united under the title of National American Woman Suffrage Association and although the paper was not adopted by the combined associations, it became the commonly acknowledged organ of the movement, daily growing in strength and numbers. Another paper, meanwhile, called the Women's Tribune, ably edited by Mrs. Clare Colby and carried on with great personal sacrifice on the part of the editor, had been the organ of the National Association for some years and as the claims of the two papers at the time of the union were in conflict, neither was made the organ. After many years of service, the Tribune went the way of all the others and came to an end, leaving the entire field to the Journal. Page 5 In 1917 the Woman's Journal was purchased from Alice Stone Blackwell by the Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission for the sum of $50,000.00. Instead of paying the debts, a fictitious valuation was put upon the 500 shares and upon that basis it was bought, its debts paid, and the movement knew no pause. The form was changed from that of a newspaper to a magazine and its name changed to The Woman Citizen. It had long been a weekly when purchased and it was continued as such until the end of the suffrage campaign. It then became a bi-monthly and then a monthly. No number has failed to appear in its total existence of fifty-seven years. Its editors and manager have been illustrious. The best of the greatest have put their souls highest into this paper. Its lists of editors-in-chief tell a thrilling story. Mary A. Livermore, first editor, from Jan. 1870 to Jan. 1872- 2 years Julia Ward Howe, Jan. 1872 to Jan. 1880..............................- 8 " Lucy Stone (until her death) Jan. 1880 to Oct. 1893............-13 " Henry B. Blackwell (until his death) Oct. 1893 - Sept. 1909.-16 " Alice Stone Blackwell, Sept. 1909 - June 1917......................- 8 " Rose Young (first editor of The Woman Citizen) June 1917 - April 1921..- 4 " Virginia Roderick, April 1921 to present date..........................- 6 " Total..........57 years I know of no more heroic devotion to a cause than that of the Blackwells. Mr. Blackwell and Lucy Stone were the continuous managers and financial agents of the Journal from the first. When no more eminent editor could be found, Lucy Stone assumed it and there she served, assisted by husband and daughter, until her death. I visited her upon her death illness and she said t me "It pays to have a daughter; her coming and earliest years incapacitated me for [for] a time, but now I am going soon and the work isn't done. I am so glad she is here to carry it forward." At the death of Lucy Stone, her husband, one of the only two men in the world who gave their lives to the woman cause, took up the never ending gring where she dropped it, and, Page 6 aided by Alice Stone Blackwell, was editor in chief for a longer period than any other. At his death the daughter took it and carried the burden onward. She grew poorer in purse and frailer in health when the Leslie snatched the responsibility from her tired hands, but I must add that it has never been able to raise the standard of principle and honor any higher than it was maintained under the Blackwells for forty-seven years. The paper came to the Leslie Commission at the zenith of the suffrage campaign. It paid deficits cheerfully but heavily and as the end of its funds was approaching the Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission took new action in the hope that the paper might still lead on. The total which the Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission has paid for the purchase and the yearly deficits of the paper up to this date is $393, 381.79. On September 15, 1925 the Leslie Commission, which has carried on its books as loans all payments except the original purchase price, voted to charge all the loans made from the time the paper came into its hands until after the vote was won, to suffrage campaign expenses. The sum thus written off was $155,277.06. This leaves the investment of the Commission as $238,104.73. Mrs. Brown, recognizing that no paper becomes self-supporting without the expenditure of much money in promotion, and seeing that the Leslie Commission could do no more than meet the deficit on production and could do that for a limited time, proposed a promotion fund of $150,000 to cover a period of three years, the amount to be the contribution of women and returnable in stock. The Commission accepted this proposal with some incredibility and wishes to announce a humbled change of attitude plus a wondering amazement at Mrs. Brown's success in securing grantors. She has put into the enterprise the same fervid faith, that insistence, that has kept the flag of liberal women's views Page 7 and hopes afloat for more than half a century. We meet, therefore, today, the Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission and the representatives of the 68 guarantors secured by Mrs. Brown. To each has been issued the pro rata of stock, one share for every hundred dollars actually paid. The guarantors and the Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission are, therefore, the present owners of the Citizen. The total number of shares thus issued is 2848 and that will be the total number of votes that may be cast in this meeting, provided each shareholder is present either in person or by proxy. This meeting of stockholders will elect eleven directors in accordance with the by-laws of the Citizen Corporation as filed in the State Department at Albany. All of these stockholders will naturally be members of the Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission or will be guarantors. It may be considered desirable to elect some directors who are neither one nor the other and they will therefore not be stockholders. It is desirable that the Citizen Corporation vote one share of stock to each of such directors with the understanding that these shares of directors stock will be transferred to successors when and if they occur. When these things have been done, the Citizen is re-organized and further business will be undertaken by the directors. The questions of paramount interest to us all are 1. Is the woman movement at an end, or is there still need for the further expression of liberal opinion concerning her status and her functions in the changing life of the world? The answer seems to be that so long as narrow-minded, intolerant and positively hostile attacks are made upon women in general in all departments of life, and especially in the political field, so long as newspapers exist which voice these attacks, some medium of defense is required. Page 8 2. Granting the need, the next question is:- Does the Citizen supply the need and can it become self-supporting or possibly profitable in order that it may continue as long as that need remains? Personally I believe the need and a very decided demand exists for such a magazine as ours is supposed to be. There is no rival of the Citizen in the magazine field. It stands alone and I believe it is able to meet the situation. If anyone can make it pay, I believe Mrs. Brown and Miss Roderick will do it. At the annual meeting of the Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission held September 15, 1925, before it had been proposed that there should be any increase of the capital stock, the Commission, in order to make its investment in the Citizen appear a little less controlling, voted to write off from the investment the Commission had made in the Citizen an arbitrary amount to be set aside as the cost of the suffrage campaign. It was, therefore, voted to write off from the amount to be put into the Citizen the sum of $166,377.06. The dates chosen for estimating this amount were the beginning of our connection with the Citizen in 1917 and the date when Mrs. Brown took over the management in May 1921. Later the proposal to increase the stock from 500 to 5000 shares was proposed and the Leslie Commission and the Citizen Corporation met to consider this proposal. It was accepted and the shares were increased from 500 to 5000 in order that stock might be offered to guarantors. In the preparation for this meeting, however, it was discovered that in the hasty action made necessary by the calling of that meeting, an important point had been overlooked. The Leslie Commission, up to this moment, has put into the Citizen $393,381.79. There remains $12,000 pledged to be paid upon demand. It was discovered that when so large a sum as $166,377.06 was written off from this total, the shares of the Leslie Commission were reduced below what is ordinarily known in Corporations as a control. It was therefore Page 9 voted at the Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission meeting yesterday, April 18th, that this action be reconsidered and the amount written off should be $155,277.06 instead of $166,377.06. By this action $11,100 was returned to the investment of the Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission in the Citizen and gives to the Commission at this time 2381 shares. When the $12,000 pledged by the Commission to the Citizen has been paid, 120 shares will be issued to the Commission, thus making 2501 shares. It was voted at the meeting of September 15, 1925 that Mrs. Brown and Miss Roderick should each receive 50 shares of stock for each of three years, although these shares were valueless at the time and the pledge was made when stock was 500 shares. In order not to disturb the control of the Commission in the Citizen, an additional motion was passed yesterday by the Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission and that is, that the stock pledged to Mrs. Brown and Miss Roderick shall be given out of the Leslie stock and not from the Treasury Stock and this stock shall remain with the Leslie Commission until such time as the Citizen becomes self-supporting. It is not necessary for the Citizen Corporation to take any action in reference to the stock promised to Mrs. Brown and Miss Roderick. I am merely making the announcement that they will receive the stock when the Citizen become self-supporting and that they will receive it from the shares now held by the Leslie Commission. It is, however, necessary that the Citizen Corporation confirm the action of the Leslie Commission concerning the valuation of its own shares in the Citizen. 3 Monadnock St. Upham's Corner, Boston, Mass. May 16, 1927 Dear Mrs. Catt: Many thanks for letting me see this article, and for the kind things that you say about the Blackwells. Isn't it fine that Mrs. Brown has been so successful in raising money! I am glad the Woman 2 Citizen is to go on. It would have been mortifying if it had had to stop, while that pernicious Woman's Party can keep up their little paper. You say there are probably some inaccuracies in your account, but that they will not matter, for these new women who have "no background." It would not matter, if the account were merely 3 to be read to them; but it is also to be published in the Citizen, which goes everywhere; and what you say carries great weight. So I hope you will not object to my writing a letter to the Citizen to set right some mistakes in the part relating to the Woman's Journal. The Journal was not founded with Mrs. Eddy's legacy. We did 4 not get that till some years later, after prolonged litigation. When we did receive it, my mother used part of it to start the Woman's Column & to carry that on - supplying material for a weekly column of news notes about women, flavored with suffrage, to about 1000 newspapers all over the U.S.--and put most of the rest of 5 it into the Woman's Journal. Whenever we had an annual deficit, for years, we drew upon the Eddy legacy to make it up. It was an immense help. But the Woman's Journal was started with $10,000, most of which my mother raised by personal solicitation. My father gave her the first $1000., & then she went to others. Mrs. Livermore's 6 paper, the Agitator, was moved from Chicago in 1870 & merged into the W.J., & should be mentioned among those that have gone to make up the Woman Citizen. (By the way, when the Citizen was started, that excellent N.Y. paper, the Woman Voter, & the Headquarters Newsletter, were consolidated with the W.J. to make it.) 7 After two years the $10,000. raised to start the Woman's Journal was all used up, & it became necessary to have editors who would serve without pay. Mrs. Livermore, whose time was under increasing demand in the lecture field, resigned & my father & mother shouldered the burden of the editorship, and carried it as long as they lived, with such help as I could give them later. Mrs. Howe gave the paper the help of her distinguished name as one of the editors, and of course it was put at 8 the [head] head of the list. She often contributed, but she never did the editorial work. I first took charge of the paper alone in 1882, when my parents were absent in one of the Western campaigns; & on Feb. 12, 1883, they put my name on the list as editor with them. Of course they had splendid cooperation in the early years, especially form Col. T. W. Higginson, but also from many other distinguished persons. I am glad you paid a 9 tribute to Mrs. Colby. Poor dead Mrs. Colby, how hard & heroically she did work! All sorts of good luck to you in your campaign with the D.A.R. I have thought for years that a good libel suit against some of that Woman Patriot crowd would be very wholesome! Yours sincerely, Alice Stone Blackwell. P.S. On reading over your letter again more carefully, 10 I see that what you said at the Woman Citizen meeting is not to be published in the paper, so this account that I have written is really superfluous. However, I send it along for your own information, with apologies for my blunder. COPY November 6, 1908 Dear Alice Blackwell: That is a fine report in the Journal of October 31, concerning the bibliography on the woman question under the direction of Ida Porter Boyer. Throughout the years new material will be added to these libraries and we must see that a complete record is made for the use of future generations. Perhaps each League will appoint a committee on libraries and help Mrs. Boyer complete her study. Perhaps some day we shall have in the Congressional Library in Washington, a story of the work of women and their campaigns for equal representation in the voting booth, in the churches and in organizations of every variety. We see a long road ahead but at the end we shall meet success. We must keep a careful record of our progress for the story will be an important one. Yours for courage in the great fight, Carrie Chapman Catt NATIONAL AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION Branch of International Woman Suffrage Alliance and of National Council of Women Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, President National Headquarters, 171 Madison Avenue Telephone, 4818 Murray Hill New York 429 1st Vice-President Mrs. Stanley McCormick, Mass. 2nd Vice-President Miss Mary Garrett Hay, New York 3rd Vice-President Mrs. Guilford Dudley, Tennessee 4th Vice-President Mrs. Raymond Brown, New York 5th Vice-President Mrs. Helen Gardener, Washington, D.C. Treasurer Mrs. Henry Wade Rogers, Connecticut Corresponding Secretary Mrs. Frank J. Shuler, New York Recording Secretary Mrs. Halsey W. Wilson, New York Press Department Miss Rose Young, Director 171 Madison Ave., New York Directors Mrs. Charles H. Brooks, Kansas Mrs. J. C. Cantrill, Kentucky Mrs. Richard E. Edwards, Indiana Mrs. George Gellhorn, Missouri Mrs. Ben Hooper, Wisconsin Mrs. Arthur Livermore, New York Miss Esther G. Ogden, New York Mrs. George A. Piersol, Pennsylvania September 15th, 1920. Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, Chilmark, Massachusetts My dear Miss Blackwell:- May thanks for your suggestions concerning Chile. As a matter of fact we have no auxiliary there and although I think we do have a name or two I shall be very glad to follow your directions concerning these names you mention and will see what we can do with them. I found a letter here upon my return from Tennessee in reference to a book or manuscript written by some Irish woman to her family (the name has escaped me just now). I have not been able to find the book although Mrs. Shuler says she thinks such a manuscript did arrive and that it went out to the farm with other mail. I have not yet been able to place it, but that does not mean that it is not here. You have perhaps been absent a long period and know how tons of mail will accumulate, and it all has to be gone through. Consequently if you do not hear from me directly about it, you will know the reason why. I came home very, very tired and unable to do regular grind in the office and am here only part of the time. You would also be surprised at the amount of aftermath which is demanding attention and which will keep up until November, I have no doubt. I note what you say about Maud Wood Park. I have thought the same thing, but the League of Women Voters is going to have a great difficulty to raise money. All legislative and political bodies do have difficulty. There is only one thing to be done and that is to make her the manager and give her the salary, but that cannot be done, I think, until another Convention. I have been able to pay very little attention to the League of Women Voters as the ratification has been all absorbing. I am sure no one would ever believe how much work each one of these miserable states have caused us. The ratifications seem to come in such a spontaneous Miss Alice Stone Blackwell -2- September 15, 1920 way, but I beg to assure you that there is nothing spontaneous about them. It would have been spontaneous if we had regular sessions. Wasn't it magnanimous of brother Brandegee to come forward and favor ratification after it was all over? Most cordially yours, Carrie Chapman Catt President NATIONAL AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION Branch of International Woman Suffrage Alliance and of National Council of Women Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, President National Headquarters, 171 Madison Avenue Telephone, 4818 Murray Hill New York 1st Vice-President Mrs. Stanley McCormick, Mass. 2nd Vice-President Miss Mary Garrett Hay, New York 3rd Vice-President Mrs. Guilford Dudley, Tennessee 4th Vice-President Mrs. Raymond Brown, New York 5th Vice-President Mrs. Helen Gardner, Washington, D.C. Treasurer Mrs. Henry Wade Rogers, Connecticut Corresponding Secretary Mrs. Frank J. Shuler, New York Recording Secretary Mrs. Halsey W. Wilson, New York 429 Press Department Miss Rose Young, Director 171 Madison Ave., New York Directors Mrs. Charles H. Brooks, Kansas Mrs. J. C. Cantrill, Kentucky Mrs. Richard E. Edwards, Indiana Mrs. George Gellhorn, Missouri Mrs. Ben Hooper, Wisconsin Mrs. Arthur Livermore, New York Miss Esther G. Ogden, New York Mrs. George A. Piersol, Pennsylvania January 8th, 1921. Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, 3 Monadnock Street, Dorchester, Massachusetts My dear Miss Blackwell:- I was so shocked at your letter telling me that you were too unwell to come over for the Leslie meetings. We do need your judgment very much in the present situation, but we don't need anybody's judgment enough to have a precious heritage like you run any risks by coming over to New York. We shall have to get along without you as best we can. I am very, very sorry. However, I am more sorry that you are not well. I wonder what is the matter? I hope it is nothing serious. If you have been getting some of these hard colds that go the rounds and threaten to send us into the Kingdom Come, I hope you will do the right thing and go South or to one of the Island and get rid of it. That is about the best thing to do. Boston has an abominable climate and its no less trying because you have been accustomed to it all your life. I don't want to think of the world without you in it as long as I am, so please take care of yourself and we will go about the same time. Lovingly yours, Carrie C. Catt NATIONAL AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION Branch of International Woman Suffrage Alliance and of National Council of Women Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, President National Headquarters, 171 Madison Avenue Telephone, 4818 Murray Hill New York 1st Vice-President Mrs. Stanley McCormick, Mass. 2nd Vice-President Miss Mary Garrett Hay, New York 3rd Vice-President Mrs. Guilford Dudley, Tennessee 4th Vice-President Mrs. Raymond Brown, New York 5th Vice-President Mrs. Helen Gardner, Washington, D.C. Treasurer Mrs. Henry Wade Rogers, Connecticut Corresponding Secretary Mrs. Frank J. Shuler, New York Recording Secretary Mrs. Halsey W. Wilson, New York 337 Directors Mrs. Charles H. Brooks, Kansas Mrs. J. C. Cantrill, Kentucky Mrs. Richard E. Edwards, Indiana Mrs. George Gellhorn, Missouri Mrs. Ben Hooper, Wisconsin Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, Ohio Miss Esther G. Ogden, New York Mrs. George A. Piersol, Pennsylvania February 15, 1922. Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, 3 Monadnock Street, Dorchester, Massachusetts My dear Miss Blackwell:- I was a great pleasure to get a personal letter from you and to learn all the news of the family. I am especially glad to know that you are no longer doing your own cooking, and I think that must be the reason that you now think that you can go to the League of Women Voters Convention in Baltimore. You were not feeling up to the task of going to Cleveland I remember. I now am writing to ask if you are coming to the Citizen Corporation meeting, which I have called for the 8th. I sent you the official notice and did not have time at that date to say anything more about it. Since calling the meeting, I have concluded to have the Citizen meet at my house on the morning of Wednesday, March 8th. I shall invite the members of the Leslie Commission, who are not members of the Citizen Corporation, to meet with us and we will have lunch together. I also invite all of you for dinner although I think that we shall need to perform no business in the evening. It would, however, be a pleasure to have you all together, and I think we would enjoy to have the privilege of talking about something else besides business. The Leslie Commission will meet at the office on the 9th. Is your cousin still available as a hostess while you are in New York? I have asked Mrs. Upton to stay at the house. I did that when she was last here. I have only one spare bed room, but I can arrange to take you in and make you comfortable I think, provided you will not mind being interrupted in your room once in a while when -2- somebody runs in to get some forgotten thing. I would like you to let me know how it will be with you. Thanks for the compliment about "Who Is Scared". There was quite a rise, as is said in slang, from the Republicans and also from the Democrats. The Republicans got their's this week, and the Democrats next. I think I am getting to be quite a contributor. Many thanks also for your kind promise to continue writing for the Citizen when some thing comes up which inspires you to do so. Whatever you say will always be welcome and nobody can say things quite equally with yourself. I am more than glad that you have begun seriously to work on your dear mother's biography. I am afraid she wasn't as much given to keeping data as some of the others were, but you will be interested to find much that you have forgotten, I am sure. I want to tell you about the book I am trying to do, and I am now engaged in making a brief against the legal interests concerning our question. It isn't so easy as would seem. Thanking you so much for your letter and also for your Valentine, and postponing further discussion on the subject of the proposed leaflet until we get the material, I am Yours very lovingly, Carrie Chapman Catt [*PMS Citizen*] October 27, 1924. Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, 3 Monandock Street, Boston 25, Mass. My dear Alice Blackwell: Miss Roderick turned over to me for reading a copy of your recent letter concerning advertising matter. I did not see the article that you sent for advertising, but Mrs. Brown asked me about it and I said to her, as I now say to you, that when the arrangements were made for passing the Journal over to the Leslie Commission I recall quite well that you requested the opportunity of an occasional advertisement and you mentioned that it might be for a lecture, a book and possibly to help out the need of some friend. I have not turned to the minutes to see what was written, but certainly it was never the intention of anybody concerned, and least of all you, that the privilege of free advertisments should include the advertisement for a political party and I think you must readily see that this must be so. The Citizen has had to walk a very straight chalk line to keep its non-partisanship straight and when it gives an advantage to one party, it must do it to all. I believe, if you will think about it a bit, you will see that no contract could ever have been made to include political favors. As a matter of fact, none of us could have dreamed how differently we might view the vote when it finally came into our hands. However, no milk is spilled, no tempers have been ruffled, and I am inclined to believe that the country will move on whoever is elected President. As for myself, I find the campaign so foolishly evasive of real issues, so exaggerated in its charges, one against another, that it interests me very little. I do not see why people get so excited over it. I hope the summer has brought you rest and vigor for another winter; that all is well with you and ever will be. Very lovingly yours [*For Mrs. Catt*] COPY 3 Monadnock Street, Boston 25, Massachusetts, October 21, 1924. Dear Miss Roderick: Don't be distressed about that advertising matter. I am not distressing myself. I was "riled" at first, but as soon as I understood the situation I saw that you and Mrs. Brown had really been very considerate to me in putting in ads for me so often, when you were not aware that I was entitled to any. I have not found time to write to Mrs. Catt yet, but if she will have her secretary look over the Minutes of the conferences that were held when we settled the terms on which the Woman's Journal was turned over, she will find that that was one of the items in the agreement - though it was not a big enough thing to be put into the Articles of Incorporation. It is not surprising that it should have slipped her memory, when her mind has been full ever since of so much larger affairs; but I remember it perfectly, and it has been kept fresh in my memory by the fact that in pursuance of it I have been sending in occasional three-inch ads every since the Woman Citizen was started. I know I am right about it; but the matter can wait till after election. ..... Yours cordially, (signed) Alice Stone Blackwell 3 Monadnock St. Boston 25, Mass. March 13, 1924. Dear Mrs. Catt: Many thanks for the book of Dulce Ma. Borrero de Luján's poems. I have long wished to possess it. Please excuse pencil, as my eyes are still troubling me. Am hoping to see you at Buffalo. Yours always gratefully, [signed] Alice Stone Blackwell. May 28, 1925. Miss Alice Stone Blackwell 3 Monandoc Street, Boston, Mass. My dear Alice: The history of the suffrage movement, which you undoubtedly saw mentioned as a coming Citizen article, is a brief history which Ida Husted Harper prepared for our recent meeting in Washington. When we thought the organization would dissolve she thought a bried history might find a place in the press and we therefore asked her to write and to limit it to twenty minutes. We told her she could make it a little longer for publication, but she could only have twenty minutes to read it. Her idea was to prove the long devotion of the N.A.W.S.A. to the Federal Amendment, in order to add one more bit of evidence establishing the fact that the Woman's Party did not win the suffrage single handed and alone. I think she merely gives dates at the outset and centers the whole thing around the later movement. I believe it was too long for one issue of the Citizen and it really does not touch the period you would like to have mentioned. I think you are quite right in believing that that part of the history to be biased. I am sure it could have not been otherwise. It was said in Washington at a meeting of the Executive Committe that we were very much in need of another history that had not been written. It was to be a picturesque, spirited story of the movement rather than a stiff and solemn history. I think there is a need of that sort of thing, but I do not think there is any money to pay for it and I doubt if it will ever be written. I am convinced that future investigators desiring to know the truth about the suffrage movement will never find it through the press and that they will scarcely discover the real spirit of it through any history that has been written. I conclude that all history is, in the same way, inaccurate and misleading. There is one great gap in American suffrage history and that is the biography that you were to have written about your father and mother. Where is it? If justice was not done in the first history, there was all the more need of you making it right in that biography. As the years go by, there is less and less chance of selling such a book, but I do think there is great need of it in the suffrage group of books. I was very sorry indeed that you could not be with us on that day in Washington and especially sorry because you were not able to go. I wonder what you do to make yourself overworked now that you do not have a newspaper to run. I imagined myself sitting by the fireside and knitting and I actually took a lesson or two and got some needles, but I never worked harder in my life than I did in the last six months. I came home with such a high blood pressure that the doctor said I would get something I did not want if I did not rest. I am now supposedly resting, but, somehow, it does not belong to my nature. I wish I believed in theosophy. I would like to die this moment and be born again the next minute in this world where I see so many interesting things to do. Very lovingly yours, 3 Monadnock St. Boston 25 Mass. May 21, 1925. Dear Mrs. Catt: I see that a short history of the suffrage movement is soon to appear in the Woman Citizen. If you can manage it, or can use any influence towards it, I wish you would try to have a somewhat 2 ... more adequate account of the large share my father & mother took in the work given than has usually given hitherto. When the volumes of the History of Woman Suffrage dealing with the early part of the movement came out, the relations... 3 ... between the "American" & the "National" were such that the work of the American branch was minimized of course; & those books have furnished the foundation for all the later accounts. And in the Bibliography of Woman Suffrage, brought out under... 4 M. Carey Thomas's auspices, the Woman's Journal is omitted altogether from the list of suffrage periodicals. This is not a matter of desperate importance; the great thing, as my mother always felt, was that the women should get their... 5 ... rights, and not that the credit should go to those who most deserved it. Still, it is not fair, & as the Woman Citizen is the successor to the Woman's Journal,... 6 ... it would be particularly appropriate that somewhat fuller justice should be [?] to my mother & father in the account that is to appear there. Yours always affectionately, [signed] Alice Stone Blackwell January 14, 1926. Miss Alice Stone Blackwell 3 Monadnock Street Boston 25. My dear Alice: I have heard strange and sad tales about you which have made me more anxious than my silence would indicate. I hear that you had some kind of an operation. There are operations and operations. Some just amuse the doctors, and others take people over and give them a new lease of life. Mine did, and I hope yours may. Operations are difficult things to recover from, and I have never known anyone yet who had sense enough to keep quiet long enough to do it properly. I hope you have! I have made a New Year's resolution. I am going to give myself a sabbatical year. I don't know why I have had to dig so hard every minute since we got the vote. I take it that whenever any person's name and ideas get into the newspaper, there are a given number of people certain to pounce upon that person and to torment him or her by sending all kinds of letters and inquiries. I try to keep up with it all, and beside that, I am busy with the new work I have given myself to. I believe in constructive progress, and do not think it helps at all to cry "Peace, peace!" Now that we undoubtedly will soon be in the World Court, the next steps seem to be rather clearly defined. I am going to take one more lecture trip and push a little upon the organizations to get them to adopt what seems to be the right track. Then I think I may safely retire and let the world wag. I don't know when my Sabbatical year will begin, nor just how I shall spend it, but I am certainly going to have it. No lectures next year, no responsibilities, - and probably, no letters answered. You seem so far away and remote these days that I hardly know how to address you. For a long time I have been wanting to tell you some things about The Citizen. When Mrs. Brown undertook the management of the Citizen she did so with great enthusiasm and earnestness, and some knowledge. If she had known then as much as she knows now, probably we would have got on faster than we have. We have not called a meeting of the Leslie Commission of late, for the reason that the whole problem was that of money, and the Leslie Commission had the money and owned the stock and therefore seemed to have the controlling right to speak on that question. All. however, is to be changed now. At the last meeting of the Leslie Commission held in September, we gave a very thorough-going report on the resources of the Commission, and the status of the Citizen. Mrs. Brown and I had come to the conclusion that with the money which would still be available to pay deficits the Citizen would not be able to get on a paying basis and Miss Blackwell 1-14-26 2 that the time would come within three or four years when we would have no more money for the deficit and that it would absolutely be necessary to bring it to an end of some sort. Mrs. Brown believes that with money enough to pay for sufficient promotion the paper might become self-supporting. As we could not supply any such sums of money as she thought were necessary, we proposed trying to secure 50 women who wou give $1000 each for three years into a promotion fund. These women were then to be given shares in the Citizen in proportion to the amount they paid in. You will see from this arrangement that it will put the Citizen in a business sense on a wholly different basis. At the end of the first year these new contributors are to meet with the Leslie Commission and to discuss its merits and its possiblities. And at the end of the third year they will be given their shares. When anybody else but the Leslie Commission become stockholders, the business will have to be managed by the Citizen Corporation and not by the Leslie Commision any more. I am hoping that among these women will be some will take sufficient interest to be active as Directors, so that they will take over the Citizen and thus keep it going. I do not like the idea of seeing it go down. This is the story as it now stands, and Mrs. Brown has been very successful in finding her women. I don't think that any of us were very confident that she would be able to find anybody at all. But she hopes to get 25 women before the end of this month - and I really believe she will succeed. The Editor and the Manager continue to work like a perfect team, and both of them work much too hard. I thought you would be interested to know the lines that the paper is taking. It is said that the publications with great circulation are mints of money, and of course the Curtis Publishing Company with its Saturday Evening Post and its Ladie's Home Journal, is the one that is always pointed out as the most prosperous in the list. I have to-day received a circular from a broker, announcing the sale of preferred and common stock of this company offering 7 per cent. Now nobody offers 7 per cent when it is a good risk. Nobody borrows money at that rate unless they are obliged to. It is announced that the earnings for 1925 were sixteen millions. But if such papers are indeed earning such sums, I do not see why they are selling stock, - which is equivalent to borrowing money. There was Mr. Munsey, however, who certainly did make millions out of publishing. I hope you saw in either The Nation or The Red Book William Allen White's epitaph. Dear Alice, you are very dear to a great many of us - dear as in the old days, and I trust that all is well with you. I have heard that Emily Howland is 102 years old, and Henrietta Mills' mother is about 100. Certainly suffragists do hang on. Very lovingly yours, January 13, 1926 National League of Women Voters 532 - 17th St., N.W. Washington, D.C. Dear Secretary: I have a letter from Josephus Daniels saying that Mrs. Myrtle G. Short of the American Woman's Club of Shanghai, China, has requested him to send her some pamphlets or information on Modern Women Politicians of the United States. She apparently is writing a paper and has found it difficult to get material. I have written her a letter and have s said that this material has not been of sufficient importance to people in this country to collect and classify it. I will send her two or three "Citizens" with something on it. If, however, you have any material whatsoever, will you not write her. Yours very truly, 3 ? Monadnock Street, Boston 25, Mass. April 20, 1926. Dear Mrs. Catt, Enclosed are the desired pa[p]pers. There was no expense about it except 75 cents to the County Clerk. I do hope Mrs. Brown will be successful in her efforts for the Citizen. It is too bad that you and Miss Hay have had so miserable a winter in health. We read about the trouble with your ear in Minneapolis, with concern, it is such a painful affliction. Many of my friends and relatives have been laid low with repeated attacks of the grippe, or flu, or whatever the name of the demon is, and find it very hard and slow work to get back their strength. I do hope you and Miss Hay will get back [i] yours, and be able to enjoy life as much as your labors for human good deserve. Thus far, I have escaped the prevailing grippe, but of course there is no telling when I may come down with it. My general health is decidedly better than before my operation; I have more strength, and feel so much more "pep" that I am quite persecuting the Boston papers with letters on sundry subjects, from Mexico to prohibition. Speaking of Mexico, I have only lately learned that Dr. Isaac Goldberg last year got out a little so-called anthology of Mexican poetry, made up mostly of my translations. I enclose a copy, thinking that you may be interested; but do not trouble to acknowledge the receipt of it. It was full of very bad misprints, and some mistakes, the worst of which I have corrected. I do not remember whether I ever wrote to you about the misadventures of my book of Spanish American translations. More than five years ago Brentano signed a contract to bring it out, with the Spanish and English on opposite pages. He began to have it set up. Then came a long strike, which tied up all the printing trades in N.Y. for many months. When it was over, public interest in Latin American [*money might be made by selling them to the State Leagues for their historical collections.*] matters had died down. Every publisher who had brought out a translation of any Latin American book had lost money on it; and Brentano became discouraged. There was nothing in our contract as to when he should publish the book, and he put it off from year to year. After some years, when it had become clear that he was likely to delay the publication indefinitely, I released him from his contract, and took back my manuscript. I have not offered it to any publisher since, believing that the same considerations which deterred Brentano would also deter others. There seems to be a revival of interest in Latin America now, and I am thinking of trying it again. Dr. Alfred Coester told me that before Macmillan would agree to publish his "History of Spanish American Literature," they made him promise to buy 400 copies himself. I have been wondering whether some of the literary societies in Latin America, or some of the newspapers, or some of the universities, or big book stores, or some rich individuals, might [egage] engage in advance to buy a considerable number of copies - as it is an attempt to make Spanish American culture better known in the United States. If I could [go] go to a publisher with advance orders for enough copies to guaran[t]tee him against loss, almost any publisher would be willing to consider it. [Brena] Brentano estimated that it would make a book of about 600 pages, in the style of Dr. Isaac Goldberg's "Studies in Spanish American Literature," and that it could be sold for $3.50. But prices have gone up since then, and it would probably be safer to say $5. You know so many people in Latin America that it occurred to me you might be able to suggest someone with whom it might be worth while for me to corres[s]pond about this. If any body occurs to you easily, send me the name; but do not tax your mind about it. I feel guilty for even mentioning it to you. The book contains translations from more than 100 authors, representing [15] 16 or 17 Latin American countries. With kind regards to Miss Hay, yours always affectionately, Alice Stone Blackwell P.S. There are a number of sets of bound volumes of the Woman's Journal in the attic of my old home--not complete, but nearly so. They belong to the Citizen, or to the Leslie Commission & perhaps some Woman Citizen DAR Blast Carrie Chapman Catt 171 Madison Avenue New York May 7, 1927 Miss Alice Stone Blackwell 3 Monadnock Street Boston, Mass. Dear Miss Blackwell: I am in receipt of your letter this morning, and am glad that it came to-day. To-morrow morning I am going out in the country for the summer and letters are likely to be much neglected. I wanted to write you, anyway. I don't think I have any connection with multi-millionaires who will want to establish a chair for Spanish-American literature. If I should find a multi-millionaire over whom I had influence enough to get any money out of him, you may depend upon me to get it for some other purposes. It is not that I do not appreciate the value of culture, but that is not my line. I am going to pass this along to the Educational Institute, because I must send it somewhere to get off my desk, and if they have any multi-millionaires they may be interested to let something happen along Professor Coester's line. I am very glad Mrs. Boyer won the elephant,--although probably a donkey or an eagle would have done as well. I would like to tell you that I am going to start a campaign, single-handed and alone. My blood fairly boils with expectation. I never longed to get at anything so much as I do at this. I presume that my campaign will be a dead failure when I start it, but in anticipation it is going to be glorious. I am going to write an Open Letter to the D.A.R. and I am going to accuse them of being a distributing agency for the Anti-suffragists, who began, when they could think of no way to meet the suffrage arguments, to throw evil names at us. The D.A.R. is now distributing reprints from the Patriot containing these attacks plus many more. Some of these would make a dog laugh. If I were only clever enough I certainly could put the D.A.R. to blush; and I do expect to get a little rebellion going within their organization that will put a stop to the dastardly thing they are now doing. All of those Antis tell fibs, and they distribute the fibs. It didn't do much harm, but proved a boomerang, so I think it will again--but I am going to have some fun with the D.A.R. We are going to print it in the Citizen to begin with and then we are going to send copies to the D.A.R. organizations. I think it will get under the skin of some of them anyway however badly I do it. I hope I will not get sued. I don't think I am half as clever as Eichelberger is about making charges that are not libelous. What I wanted to write you about was the Citizen. Mrs. Brown Alice Stone Blackwell 5/7/27 2 *Carrie Chapman Catt* *171 Madison Avenue* *New York* last year presented the idea that the Citizen must have more money for promotion than it had ever had, and that perhaps it could pull through to self-support, if it had it. She suggested getting women to give money for a promotion fund. None of the Leslie Commission really believed she could do it. She wanted to raise $50,000 a year for three years. She has raised the $50,000 for this year, and has a good deal on the $50,000 for each of the next two years. I don't know but that she will pull it through yet. The result of this plan is that we have increased the stock from $500 to $5000, the Leslie Commission keeping a bare control; but the new promotion contributors each have stock and therefore the Citizen is passing into quite other hands. I hope it will keep going, anyway. When they had their spring meeting inviting these sponsors, I wrote a little history of the Citizen for their benefit. It is not complete, nor quite accurate, probably, but it was good enough for these women, who did not have much background. I thought perhaps you might like to know what I said in part, and therefore I am sending it to you. As this, however, goes in the envelope file along with the minutes, I will ask you to return it. Just put it in the enclosed envelope when you have looked it over. They wanted you to see what I have said about the Blackwells. I am awfully sorry that you broke your arm, and think that you are to be congratulated upon coming through as well as you did. Give my love and best regards to Mrs. Boyer, and tell her to keep on downing the Antis. With love now and forever for you, I am Yours very truly, Carrie Chapman Catt Enclosures(2) CCC-F April 25, 1929. My dear Miss Blackwell: I have received your letter concerning certain old copies of the Journal which you found in an old closet at your house. I have searched to find a certain letter from you received at the time we were writing many to each other about the disposition of the Journal. I did not find the letter. You had a naughty way of putting such things in a little postscript on a corner. At any rate, it is my recollection, although it may not be correct, that we received two whole sets of the Journal and it has stuck fast in my memory that you asked if you might keep a set as you were accustomed to referring to it for back history. That request of yours was granted and I believe that two sets came to us. We regarded one as that of the Commission and the other as that of the Citizen. One of these sets was bound and placed in the New York Library, along with other material left over from the N/A.W.S.A. Recently the Leslie Commission rebound the other set and. of course, has always intended to place that in a library. Our intention has been that when and if the Citizen comes to an end, that set, together with the set of the Citizen published since the Journal was purchased, should go together to the Congressional Library. I do not think that we have any odds and ends of copies of the Journal and, therefore, no odd numbers would be of benefit to us. There is no reason now why we should want the copies that you have. I think they ought to be dug out of their hiding place and put in order, so something might be done with them. If this is a second set in your possession, I think you may make such disposition with it as you may like, for I feel sure that it would go into a library, and what library would have a better claim to it than that of the Boston Public Library. I should say, therefore, that the best use to which you could put those old Journals is to get them into the Boston Library. Perhaps you have already provided that Library with a set. I regard the old Journals as so valuable, that I think the utmost care should be taken of their disposition, but I am sure no one will object if you, yourself, decide where they should go. Some years back you were having a good deal of trouble with your eyes, I think, and I extended to you a good deal more sympathy than you ever knew about. I now invite you to return some of it to me, because I am having the same trouble. I do wade through the morning paper, skipping more of it than I ever did, but I can not read fine print. I get most of my information by being read to rather than by reading by myself. Page 2 You know, dear friend, that suffragists have a reputation for living long, but I seem to be threatened to pass on. However, suppose you and I keep up the record and hang on until we are eighty, at least. Lovingly yours, CCC:HW. Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, Boston, Mass. Transcribed and reviewed by volunteers participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.