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The Story of a Pioneer-Part47_Anna Howard Shaw(1847-1919)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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``If political equality is the basis of social equality,

and if by granting political equality you lay the



foundation for a claim of social equality, I can only

answer that you have already laid that claim. You



did not wait for woman suffrage, but disfranchised

both your black and your white women, thus making



them politically equal. But you have done more

than that. You have put the ballot into the hands



of your black men, thus making them the political

superiors of your white women. Never before in the



history of the world have men made former slaves

the political masters of their former mistresses!''



The point went home and it went deep. I drove

it in a little further.



``The women of the South are not alone,'' I said,

``in their humiliation. All the women of America



share it with them. There is no other nation in the

world in which women hold the position of political



degradation our American women hold to-day.

German women are governed by German men;



French women are governed by French men. But

in these United States American women are gov-



erned by every race of men under the light of the

sun. There is not a color from white to black, from



red to yellow, there is not a nation from pole to

pole, that does not send its contingent to govern



American women. If American men are willing to

leave their women in a position as degrading as this



they need not be surprised when American women

resolve to lift themselves out of it.''



For a full moment after I had finished there was

absolute silence in the audience. We did not know



what would happen. Then, suddenly, as the truth

of the statement struck them, the men began to



applaud--and the danger of that situation was over.

Another episode had its part in driving the suf-



frage lesson home to Southern women. The Legis-

lature had passed a bill permitting tax-paying women



to vote at any election where special taxes were to

be imposed for improvements, and the first election



following the passage of this bill was one in New

Orleans, in which the question of better drainage



for the city was before the public. Miss Gordon

and the suffrage association known as the Era



Club entered enthusiastically into the fight for good

drainage. According to the law women could vote



by proxy if they preferred, instead of in person, so

Miss Gordon drove to the homes of the old con-



servative Creole families and other families whose

women were unwilling to vote in public, and she



collected their proxies while incidentally" target="_blank" title="ad.顺便一提；偶然地">incidentally she showed

them what position they held under the law.



With each proxy it was necessary to have the signa-

ture of a witness, but according to the Louisiana law



no woman could witness a legal document. Miss

Gordon was driven from place to place by her colored



coachman, and after she had secured the proxy of

her temporaryhostess it was usually discovered that



there was no man around the place to act as a wit-

ness. This was Miss Gordon's opportunity. With



a smile of great sweetness she would say, ``I will

have Sam come in and help us out''; and the colored



coachman would get down from his box, and by

scrawling his signature on the proxy of the aristo-



cratic lady he would give it the legal value it lacked.

In this way Miss Gordon secured three hundred



proxies, and three hundred very conservative women

had an opportunity to compare their legal standing



with Sam's. The drainage bill was carried and in-

terest in woman suffrage developed steadily.



The special incident of the Buffalo convention of

1908 was the receipt of a note which was passed up



to me as I sat on the platform. When I opened it

a check dropped out--a check so large that I was



sure it had been sent by mistake. However, after

asking one or two friends on the platform if I had






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