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^ 335 2. Enclosures missing. Hoar presented the petition to the Senate on 14 March 1900 without the customary designation of a committee to receive it, and the chair sent it to the Select Committee on Woman Suffrage rather than the Committee on Foreign Relations. The Hawaii bill, Senate 222, was introduced in the Fifty-sixth Congress on 6 December 1899 and referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations on 12 December. It was essentially Senate 4893 as amended in the Fifty-fifth Congress, and it retained “male” as a qualification to vote and hold office. The committee reported back on 4 January 1900, and after extended debate over the last two weeks of February, the Senate passed the bill on 1 March and sent it to the House of Representatives. There it awaited debate. (Congressional Record, 56th Cong., 1st sess., 6, 12 December 1899, 4 January, 14 March 1900, pp. 89, 233, 643, 2870; 56th Cong., 1st sess., A Bill to provide a government for the Territory of Hawaii, 6 December 1899, S. 222, and 4 January 1900, S. 222 amended, and 2 March 1900 in the House of Representatives, S. 222 amended.) 3. Alexander Stephens Clay (1853–1910), Democrat of Georgia, served in the Senate from March 1897 to his death in November 1910. He did not present the petition SBA sent him. (BDAC.) 4. When the Bricklayers’ and Masons’ International Union met in Rochester, SBA addressed the delegates. The National Building Trades Council responded to the plea she sent to hundreds of conventions of men. See Film, 40:718–23, 734. ••••••••• 150 • ECS to Lillie Devereux Blake [New York, between 12 & 24 March 1900] 1 Dear Mrs Blake Your circular received. I consider this a very timely & important move 2 Of all the associations & clubs to day we have not one where all the vital interests of woman can be discussed. Send one of the circulars to Rev Antoinette Brown She has been treated very disrespectfully by Susans little cabinet of “girls.” She lunched with me a few days since & I was astonished to see how sore she felt & how fully she agreed with me on our narrow platform & 5 minute speeches I wish you could spend this evening with me, all my young fry are going to hear Ellen Terry & Irving & we could have an exhaustive talk on the situation & the many dissatisfied women with the present rulers I will make out a list of all I know who have retired from the movement because of snubs by Rachel Foster Avery & et al in that [line?]. I cannot attend the meeting but but will send you my speech to the convention which was never read, 3 & The Woman’s Journal 12 march 1900 336 & would not publish either my speech to the convention nor nor to the Congressional Committee. 4 Do come & see me as soon as possible yours as ever U Elizabeth Cady Stanton Y ALS, Lillie D. Blake Papers, MoSHi. In Film at before 25 March 1900. 1. This undated letter anticipates a meeting on 28 March 1900,but its reference to the American tour of the great English actors Henry Irving (1838–1905) and Ellen Terry (1847–1928) places it between March 12 and 24. (New York Times, 11, 25 March 1900.) 2. The circular announced a meeting in New York City on 28 March 1900, at which Lillie Blake founded the National Legislative League, with the object “to obtain for women equality of legal,municipal,and industrial rights through action by the National Congress and State Legislatures.”State laws about mothers’rights, wives’ earnings, and married women’s property were singled out for the league’s attention. ECS was made honorary vice president, and Blake told the press that the league would not “antagonize any existing body.” (Woman’s Tribune, 21 April 1900, Film, 41:163; Blake and Wallace, Champion of Women, 206–10.) 3. ECS refers to the speech that did not reach Washington in time to be read at the opening session but was published later by Clara Colby, Film, 40:925. For her letter to Blake’s meeting, see Film, 41:164–67. 4. See above at 13 February 1900. ••••••••• 151 • George F. Hoar to SBA Washington, D.C., March 14, 1900. [handwritten] Confidential My dear Miss Anthony: If attention had been publicly called to the matter of woman suffrage in Hawaii it is probable there would have been some legislation which would have not only prohibited it for the present, but have made it almost impossible to get it for a very...

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