Albany, spoke briefly, and Mr. May paid high tribute to the valuable
work of women in temperance and anti-slavery, declaring their influence
as indispensable to the state and the church as to the home. Miss
Anthony then said their treatment showed that the time had come for
women to have an organization of their own; and the final outcome was
the appointment of a committee, with herself as chairman, to call a
Woman's State Temperance Convention.
She at once wrote to all parts of the State urging the unions to send
delegates, and received many encouraging replies. Horace Greeley wrote
as follows:
I heartily approve the call of the Woman's Temperance Convention,
and hope it may result in good. To this end I would venture to
suggest:
1st. Hold an informal and private meeting before you attempt to
meet in public. There select your officers, your business
committees, etc., so that there shall be no jarring when you
assemble in public.
2d. Have your addresses and resolves carefully prepared beforehand.
Make them very short and pointed. Have them in type so that they
may appear promptly and simultaneously in the daily papers. If you
will send us a copy of them the night before we will endeavor to
print them with our proceedings of the meeting received by
telegraph.
3d. Be sure that your strongest thinkers speak and that the weaker
forbear, and that extraneous matters, so far as possible, are let
alone.
It will be seen that by adopting these shrewd political methods there
would not be much left for the convention proper to do except listen to
the speeches, but it would be hard to compress into smaller space more
sensible advice. Mrs. Nichols wrote her: "It is most invigorating to
watch the development of a woman in the work for humanity: first,
anxious for the cause and depressed with a sense of her own inability;
next, partial success of timid efforts creating a hope; next, a faith;
and then the fruition of complete self-devotion. Such will be your
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