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494 & suggested that it would be well to disfranchise all men who cannot read. To this the speaker replied: “No,it is a great deal better to have them vote.In New York the ignorant men,those in the slums,all vote,and we are a thousand times better off with their having the ballot than if they did not have it.I would much rather have a man vote, no matter if he was so ignorant that he could not read a letter. We are a great deal safer. Those men would be the first ones to rise up in a mob if we should disfranchise them. At each election they are led to think that this or that candidate will better the condition of the country and that their wages will be raised. It gives them a voice. As women, we cannot ask that any one be disfranchised.” Y Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 18 November 1903. 1. Still unable to vote in school elections, women of Rochester worked hard through the Local Council of Women to keep Helen Montgomery on the school board and get a second woman elected. (Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 9 September 1903,Film,43:699; Pease,“Gannetts of Rochester,”16–18; Blake McKelvey , “Rochester’s Public Schools: A Testing Ground for Community Policies,” Rochester History 31 [April 1969]: 9–10.) ••••••••• 245 • SBA to Elizabeth Browne Chatfield1 Rochester, N.Y., Dec. 12, 1903. Dear Lib:—¶1 Your good letter came duly. “Kit” Stanton had been miserable for a long time. 2 Your word of him was so sweet, carrying me back to his young and beautiful days, that I sent the letter to Mrs. Blatch, asking her to send it to Maggie and for Maggie to send it to Kit’s wife, who is a beautiful woman of thirty perchance, now. She was very young when he married her. I presume she will go home to her father’s and live. 3 Kit belonged to societies enough to break any man down. They do say that he was the son of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. They could not well say he was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Henry B. Stanton. It is a wonder they did not. Well, he has followed his mother very soon, and I suppose is lying at Riverside by the side of her. That is a nice place that Julia 4 has, and your letter was very refreshing in its word from her and your other 17 november 1903 ^ 495 sister. I am pretty well and doing as well as I can in sending out Volume IV and then with it Vols. I, II and III, very often.¶2 Some time, if I ever can, I mean to call to see you again. I did enjoy my visit with you ten years ago the coming Winter. 5 You will remember it. It seems but a night in time, and yet it is a long time. Just to think that one short decade ago I made the circuit of every county seat with a convention of two days, Anna Shaw speaking the alternate night with me. It was a grand campaign that of 1894, and when 1914 comes around, if our women are at all alive to the situation, they will make another still stronger and better canvass, 6 and I hope the men elected to that convention will have back bone to vote in accordance with their conscience and not be governed by the prospects of the governorship of any of Chairman Choate, 7 ambassador, now you know, or any other popinjay.¶3 Enclosed is a programme of our Political Equality Club. 8 You will see that Harriet Stanton speaks two weeks from tomorrow, and Miss Shaw closes the campaign. When you see Miss Shaw advertised again at Binghamton, go and see her and tell her who you are. That you were my private secretary and trusted friend during the publication of the Revolution. I am sure she will give you a welcome, but if she does not it will be the worse for herself and not for you. Sincerely yours, U Susan B. Anthony Y TLS, on NAWSA letterhead, F. M. Denison Collection, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, CaOTUTF. Directed to 18 West Front St., Owego, N.Y. 1. Elizabeth C. Browne Chatfield (1842–1917) returned to live in her parents’ house is Owego, New York, after the death of her elderly husband, Levi S. Chatfield , in 1884. As a...

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