Women from all parts of the world assembled in Albaugh's Opera House in Washington for the epoch-making international conference which opened on Sunday, March 25, 1888, with religious services conducted entirely by women, as if to prove to the world that women in the pulpit were appropriate and adequate. Fifty-three national organizations sent representatives, and delegates came from England, France, Norway, Denmark, Finland, India, and Canada.
Presiding over all sixteen sessions, Susan rejoiced over a record attendance. Her thoughts went back to the winter of 1854 when she and Ernestine Rose had held their first woman's rights meetings in Washington, finding only a handful ready to listen. The intervening thirty-four years had worked wonders. Now women were willing to travel not only across the continent but from Europe and Asia to discuss and demand equal educational advantages, equal opportunities for training in the professions and in business, equal pay for equal work, equal suffrage, and the same standard of morals for all. Aware of their responsibility to their countries, they asked for the tools, education and the franchise, to help solve the world's problems. They were listened to with interest and respect, and were received at the White House by President and Mrs. Cleveland.
Through it all, a dynamic, gray-haired woman in a black silk dress with a red shawl about her shoulders was without question the heroine of the occasion. "This lady," observed the Baltimore _Sun_, "daily grows upon all present; the woman suffragists love her for her good works, the audience for her brightness and wit, and the multitude of press representatives for her frank, plain, open, business-like way of doing everything connected with the council.... Her word is the parliamentary law of the meeting. Whatever she says is done without murmur or dissent."[363]
A permanent International Council of Women to meet once every five years was organized with Millicent Garrett Fawcett of England as president, and a National Council to meet every three years was formed as an affiliate with Frances Willard as president and Susan as vice-president at large. Emphasizing education and social and moral reform, the International Council did not rank suffrage first as Susan had hoped. Nevertheless, she was happy that an international movement of enterprising women was well on its way. They would learn by experience.