The great work of rolling up petitions, not only to Congress but to the New York Constitutional Convention, was then commenced.  The executive board of the Standard offered to lease to the Equal Rights Association office-room and a certain amount of space in the paper.  These, however, were put at such a price and placed under such restrictions as it was thought unwise to accept.  All the matter submitted would be subject to “editorial revision,” even though the association paid for the space, and as Mr. Pillsbury had resigned the editorship and Mr. Powell had taken it, they decided they could not trust the “editorial revision.”  The women had done so vast an amount of gratuitous work for the Standard in past years, that they felt themselves entitled to more liberal treatment.  The editor had written, only a short time before, of the excellent service Miss Anthony had rendered in straightening out the accounts.  She also had secured numerous subscribers, sending in as many as thirty at a time from some of her meetings.

For the purpose of arousing public interest in the approaching New York Constitutional Convention, an equal rights meeting was held at Albany, in Tweddle Hall, November 21.  To make this a success Miss Anthony spent many weeks of hard work.  The diary notes that, among other things, she directed and sent out 1200 complimentary tickets.[38] At this Albany convention political differences began to appear.  Mrs. Stanton complimented the Democrats for the assistance they had rendered; Frederick Douglass objected to their receiving any credit, branding their advocacy as a trick of the enemy, and there were frequent sharp encounters.  Miss Anthony made an extended speech, of which there is but this newspaper report: 

She referred to the assertion of Horace Greeley, that while women had the abstract right to suffrage the great majority of them did not wish it.  So they told us when we said the negro ought to be free; he did not wish it; he was contented and happy.  As we replied relative to the negro, so do we regarding women.  If they do not desire the right to vote, it is an evidence of the depth to which they have been degraded by its deprivation.  A woman clerk, in the New York Mercantile Library, told her that during the war the salaries of the male clerks all had been raised, but not those of the women, and a man’s, who held an inferior position, had been increased to $300 more than her own.  The clerk said that if she had been a voter she did not believe such injustice would have been perpetrated.  In Rochester the salaries of the male teachers in the public schools were raised $100 per annum while the small salaries of the women were still further reduced.  In Auburn $200 additional compensation was voted to the male teachers and $25 to the women, who thereupon held a meeting and passed an ironical resolution thanking the board for their liberal allowance.  The board then required them to sign a paper saying they did not intend an insult,