Untitled Page 54

-2-

You will see by the enclosed circular a scheme I have for the establichment of a press bureau, to help further the education [crossed out] [illegible] work for the elevation of woman. Another and larger scheme I have is that of raising a standing fund, the interest of which shall be used in carrying forward our work. This fund, which I hope will reach $100,000 or more, I propose to have placed in the hands of trustees, fifteen or twenty good business women, to invest, take care of, and appropriate it as in their judgement is best. You have doubtless read the report of the trustees of the George Peabody fund, which was made last year, showuing that the interest on Mr. Peabody's million in the thirty years had amounted to $1,200,000, all of which had beeen expended in the schools of the South; mainly for colored children, and with all of thtat good work done the committee still have the interest of the million to continue to appropriate as best they may.
I am perfectly willing to bequeath to the young women who are today taking up the suffrage work all of the labor, but I am not willing that they shall have to do the begging to pay for that work, which I have been compelled to do for the last fifty years. I verily believe that more than half of my spiritual, intellectual and physical strength has been expended in the anxiety over getting the money to pay for the Herculeen work that has been done in our movement. The strain, of course, has not been so perfectly intense and immense as was your strain while the suit against your estate was pending, but nevertheless it has been so great that I am not willing that the next generation of women shall be compelled to endure it.
I tell you this not becasue I expect you to put $50,000 into the standign fund, because I know that your estate, every but of it, is bound to go to make that University continue a power to the end, but I tell it to you simly that you may know what I want to do and in case you meet any women who can put a thousand or ten thousand into this woman suffrage fund, tha tyou may urge them to do so, and I tell it to you also because I want you to feel interested in everything that I am tryingto do, as I know you have been and as our good husband always was [crossed out] i am grateful that oyu live and are able to work for the success of that grand university -- that you have a noble purpose in life and are bound to carry it to the best of your ability, is cause for gratitude, and rejoices my heart, so my dear Mrs. Stanford, I am ever and always,
Gratefully and admiringly yours,
Susan B. Anthony