There is not, I think, the slightest hope from the courts; and just as little from politicians.  They never will take up this cause, never!  Individuals will, parties never—­till the thing is done.  The Republicans want no new issues or disturbing elements.  The Democrats are certain that the Republicans are about to dissolve; and they want to hold on as they are.  Both think this thing may, perhaps will come, but now is not the time; and with both, there never will be a “now.”  The trouble is that below all this lies the fact that man can govern alone and that, though woman has the right, man wants to do it; and if she wait for him to ask her, she will never vote.

There never was a cause with so much unembodied strength, and with so little working power; and the problem is how to vitalize and organize it.  One of two things, I think, must occur; either man must be made to see and feel, as he never has done yet, the need of woman’s help in the great field of human government, and so demand it; or woman must arise and come forward as she never has, and take her place.  I still think that one of the main hindrances is with women.  The fact is, that the worst bugbear is the never-seen, ever-felt law of caste which has always walled woman around, and which few have the courage to step over.

[Autograph: 

  Sincerely yours
  A.G.  Riddle]

At the close of the convention Miss Anthony accepted the invitation of Mrs. Hooker, the State president, to join her in a month’s tour through Connecticut.  They spoke in nineteen different cities and towns, Mrs. Hooker assuming all financial responsibility and paying Miss Anthony $25 for each lecture.  They had excellent audiences and were entertained in many beautiful homes.  In Miss Anthony’s diary, March 11, she says:  “Senator Sumner died today, the noblest Roman of them all; true to the negro, but never a public word for woman.  How I have pleaded with him for years, and he always admitted that his principles logically carried out gave woman an equal guarantee with man.”

In the spring of 1874 the women’s temperance crusade began in Rochester and, although their methods were very different from those Miss Anthony would have employed, she met with them at their request to help them organize.  After this was effected they called on her for a speech and she said in brief: 

I am always glad to welcome every association of women for any good purpose, because I know that they will quickly learn the impossibility of accomplishing any substantial end.  Women never realize their inability to effect a reform until they attempt it, and then they find how closely interwoven with politics are all such matters, and how entirely without political power are they themselves....  Now my good women, the best thing this organization will do for you will be to show you how utterly powerless you are to put