Alice Paul.
Taken the Day Before She Went to Prison.
Photo Copr. Edmonston Studio, Washington, D. C.

THE STORY OF
THE WOMAN’S PARTY

BY

INEZ HAYNES IRWIN

ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS

NEW YORK

HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY

1921

COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY

HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.

THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY

RAHWAY. N. J.

“But with such women consecrating their lives failure is impossible.”

Last words spoken in public by Susan B. Anthony—
her birthday, 1906.

“Most of those who worked with me in the early years have gone. I am here for a little time only and my place will be filled as theirs was filled. The fight must not cease; you must see that it does not stop.”

Susan B. Anthony.

TO THE INSPIRED, DEVOTED, UNTIRING, AND SELF-

SACRIFICING MEMBERS OF THE WOMAN’S PARTY,

AND IN ESPECIAL TO THOSE WHOSE WORK CANNOT

FOR LACK OF SPACE BE MENTIONED HERE OR

WHOSE EFFORTS MAY NEVER EVEN IN THE FUTURE

BE PROPERLY APPRECIATED, THIS BOOK

IS ADMIRINGLY AND REVERENTLY DEDICATED.

CONTENTS

PART ONE

1913-1914

PART TWO

1915-1916

PART THREE

1917

PART FOUR

VICTORY

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PART ONE

1913 and 1914

I
INTRODUCTION

In 1912 the situation in the United States in regard to the enfranchisement of women was as follows:

Agitation for an amendment to the National Constitution had virtually ceased. Before the death of Susan B. Anthony in 1906, Suffragists had turned their attention to the States. Suffrage agitation there was persistent, vigorous, and untiring; in Washington, it was merely perfunctory. The National American Woman Suffrage Association maintained a Congressional Committee in Washington, but no Headquarters. This Committee arranged for one formal hearing before the Senate and the House Committee of each Congress. The speeches were used as propaganda mailed on a Congressman’s frank. The Suffrage Amendment had never in the history of the country been brought to a vote in the National House of Representatives, and had only once, in 1887, been voted upon in the Senate. It had not received a favorable report from the Committee in either House since 1892 and had not received a report of any kind since 1896. Suffrage had not been debated on the floor of either House since 1887. In addition, the incoming President, Woodrow Wilson, if not actually opposed to the enfranchisement of women, gave no appearance of favoring it; the great political Parties were against it. Political leaders generally were unwilling to be connected with it. Congress lacked—it is scarcely exaggeration to say—several hundreds of the votes necessary to pass the Amendment. Last of all the majority of Suffragists did not think the Federal Amendment a practical possibility. They were entirely engrossed in State campaigns.

On the other hand, the Suffrage movement, itself, was virile and vital. The fourth generation of women to espouse this cause were throwing themselves into the work with all the power and force of their able, aroused, and emancipate generation. The franchise had been granted in six States: Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Washington, California. With the winning of Oregon, Kansas, and Arizona in 1912, the movement assumed a new importance in the national field. These victories meant that there were approximately two million women voters in the United States, that one-fifth of the Senate, one-seventh of the House and one-sixth of the electoral vote came from Suffrage States.

It was in December, 1912, as Chairman of the Congressional Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, that Alice Paul came to Washington.

In the next eight years, this young woman was to bring into existence a new political Party of fifty thousand members. She was to raise over three-quarters of a million dollars. She was to establish a Headquarters in Washington that became the focus of the liberal forces of the country. She was to gather into her organization hundreds of devoted workers; some without pay and others with less pay than they could command at other work or with other organizations. She was to introduce into Suffrage agitation in the United States a policy which, though not new in the political arena, was new to Suffrage—the policy of holding the Party in power responsible. She was to institute a Suffrage campaign so swift, so intensive, so compelling—and at the same time so varied, interesting, and picturesque—that again and again it pushed the war news out of the preferred position on the front pages of the newspapers of the United States. She was to see her Party blaze a purple, white, and gold trail from the east to the west of the United States; and from the north to the south. She was to see the Susan B. Anthony Amendment pass first the House and then the Senate. She was to see thirty-seven States ratify the Amendment in less than a year and a half thereafter. She was to see the President of the United States move from a position of what seemed definite opposition to the Suffrage cause to an open espousal of it; move slowly at first but with a progress which gradually accelerated until he, himself, obtained the last Senatorial vote necessary to pass the Amendment.

What was the training which had developed in Alice Paul this power and what were the qualities back of that training, which made it possible for her to invent so masterly a plan, to pursue it so resistlessly?

II
ALICE PAUL

I watched a river of women,

Rippling purple, white and golden,

Stream toward the National Capitol.

Along its border,

Like a purple flower floating,

Moved a young woman, worn, wraithlike,

With eyes alight, keenly observing the marchers.

Out there on the curb, she looked so little, so lonely;

Few appeared even to see her;

No one saluted her.

Yet commander was she of the column, its leader;

She was the spring whence arose that irresistible river of women

Streaming steadily towards the National Capitol.

Katherine Rolston Fisher,

The Suffragist, January 19, 1918.

It is an interesting coincidence that the woman who bore the greatest single part in the Suffrage fight at the beginning—Susan Anthony—and the woman who bore the greatest single part at the end—Alice Paul—were both Quakers.

It is very difficult to get Alice Paul to talk about herself. She is not much interested in herself and she is interested, with every atom of her, in the work she is doing. She will tell you, if you ask her, that she was born in Moorestown, New Jersey, and then her interest seems to die. She apparently does not remember herself very clearly either as a child or a young girl. That is not strange. So intently has she worked in the last eight years and so intensely has she lived in that work that each year seems to have erased its predecessor. She is absolutely concentrated on now. I asked Alice Paul once what converted her to Woman Suffrage. She said that she could not remember when she did not believe in it. She added, “You know the Quakers have always believed in Woman Suffrage.”

Anne Herendeen, in a vivacious article on Alice Paul in Everybody’s Magazine for October, 1919, says, describing a visit to Moorestown:

“What do you think of all these goings-on?” I asked her mother. She sighed.

“Well, Mr. Paul always used to say, when there was anything hard and disagreeable to be done, ‘I bank on Alice.’”

The degree of education in Alice Paul’s life and the amount of social service which she had performed are a little staggering in view of her youth. Just the list of the degrees she achieved and the positions she held before she started the National Woman’s Party covers a typewritten page. They have even an unexpected international quality. One notes first—and without undue astonishment—that she acquired a B.A. at Swarthmore in 1905; an M.A. at the University of Pennsylvania in 1907; a Ph.D. at the same university in 1912. This would seem enough to fill the educational leisure of most young women, but it does not by any means complete Alice Paul’s student career. She was a graduate of the New York School of Philanthropy in 1906. She was a student at the Woodbrooke Settlement for Social Work at Woodbrooke, Birmingham, and in the University of Birmingham, England, in 1907-08; a graduate student in sociology and economics in the School of Economics of the University of London in 1908-09.

She was, in addition, a Resident Worker of the New York College Settlement in 1905-06; a Visitor for the New York Charity Organization Society in the summer of 1906; a Worker in the Summer Lane Settlement, and a Visitor in the Charity Organization Society of Birmingham, England, during the winter of 1907-08; Assistant-secretary to the Dalston Branch of the Charity Organization Society in London for a half year in 1908; a Visitor for the Peel Institute for Social Work at Clerkenwell, London, for a half year in 1908-09; a Resident Worker for the Christian Social Union Settlement of Hoxton, London, in the summer of 1908. She was also in charge of the Women’s Department of the branch of adult schools at Hoxton in the summer of 1908.

I asked Mabel Vernon, who went to Swarthmore with her, about Alice Paul. Her impressions were a little vague—mainly of a normal, average young girl who had not yet begun to “show.” She remembered that, although biology was her specialty, Miss Paul was catholic in her choice of courses; how—as though it were something she expected to need—she took a great deal of Latin; and that—as though at the urge of the same intuition—she devoted herself to athletics. She had apparently no athletic gifts; yet before she left Swarthmore she was on the girls’ varsity basketball team, was on her own class hockey team, and had taken third place in the women’s tennis tournament. She was a rosy, rounded, vigorous-looking girl then. When Mabel Vernon saw her next, she had been hunger-striking in England and was thin to the point of emaciation.

I asked Alice Paul herself about her work with the poor in England. She said, looking back on it—and it is apparently always a great effort for her to remove her mental vision from the present demand—that her main impression was of the hopelessness of it all, that there seemed nothing to do but sweep all that poverty away. The thing that she remembers especially now is that they were always burying children.

The first great, outstanding fact of Alice Paul’s training is that in the English interregnum which divided her American education, she joined the Pankhurst forces. In the beginning all her work was of the passive kind. She attended meetings and ushered. She was about to go home; indeed she had bought her passage when the Pankhursts asked her to join a deputation to Parliament. This deputation, which consisted of more than a hundred women, and was led by Mrs. Pankhurst herself, was arrested at the entrance to Parliament. They were detained in the policemen’s billiard room of the Cannon Row Police Station, the only place at that station large enough to hold so many women.

The second great outstanding fact of Alice Paul’s career in England is that she met Lucy Burns.

Lucy Burns was born in Brooklyn. The facts of her education, although superficially not so multitudinous as those of Alice Paul, are even more impressive in point of international quality. She was graduated from Packer Institute in 1899 and from Vassar College in 1902. She studied at Yale University in 1902-03, at the University of Berlin in 1906-08, at the University of Bonn in 1908-09. She joined the Woman’s Social and Political Union of London in 1909 and she worked as an organizer in Edinburgh and the east of Scotland in 1909-12.

Lucy Burns thinks she first met Alice Paul at a Suffrage demonstration. Alice Paul thinks she first met Lucy Burns in that same policemen’s billiard room of the Cannon Row Police Station, London. Both these young women remember their English experiences in flashes and pictures. They worked too hard and too militantly to keep any written record; and successive hardships wiped away all traces of their predecessors. At any rate, Alice Paul says that she spoke to Miss Burns because she noticed that she wore a little American flag. Sitting on the billiard table, they talked of home. Alice Paul also says that Lucy Burns, a student at that time of the University of Bonn in Germany, had come to England for a holiday. She entered the militant movement a few weeks after she landed and this was her first demonstration.

The women were held for trial, giving bail for their appearance. Alice Paul had engaged passage home, but she had to cancel it as the trial did not occur until after the date of her sailing. The case was appealed in the courts and was finally dropped by the government.

From this time on, the paths of the two girls kept crossing. Frequently, indeed, they worked together. The next time Alice Paul was arrested, however, Lucy Burns was not with her. This was at Norwich. Winston Churchill, a member of the cabinet, was holding a meeting. Outside, Alice Paul spoke at a meeting too—a protest against the government’s stand on Woman Suffrage. On this occasion, she was released without being tried. At the next Suffrage demonstration—at Limehouse in London—both girls assisted. On this occasion, Lloyd George was holding a meeting. Miss Paul and Miss Burns were arrested for trying to speak at a protest meeting outside, and were sentenced to two weeks in Holloway Jail. They went on a hunger-strike; but were released after five days and a half.

After they recovered from this experience, Miss Paul and Miss Burns motored to Scotland with Mrs. Pankhurst and other English Suffragists, in order to assist with the Scottish campaign. At Glasgow, the party organized a demonstration outside of a meeting held by Lord Crewe, a member of the cabinet. Arrested, they were released without trial. Proceeding northward, Miss Paul assisted in organizing the Suffrage campaign in East Fife, the district of Prime Minister Herbert Asquith. At Dundee, Miss Paul and Miss Burns took part in a demonstration outside a meeting held by Winston Churchill. The two American girls and an English Suffragist were sentenced to ten days in Dundee Prison. After four days of hunger-strike, all were released. Each night during their imprisonment, great crowds of citizens marched round the prison singing Scotch songs as a means of showing their sympathy with the campaign. Upon their release, the Suffragists were welcomed at a mass-meeting over which the Lord Mayor presided. Thence they went to Edinburgh where they assisted in organizing a procession and pageant in Princess Street—one of the most beautiful and famous thoroughfares of the world. The pageant of the Scotch heroines who had made sacrifices for liberty is still remembered in Scotland for its beauty. The next job was less agreeable. The two American girls were sent to Berwick-on-Tweed to interrupt with a protest a meeting of Sir Edward Grey, then Minister of Foreign Affairs. Miss Paul made the interruption, was arrested, but was released on the following day without going to trial. Miss Burns was not arrested that time.

Next in Bermondsey, one of the slum districts of London, they waged a plain, old-fashioned electoral campaign to defeat a candidate. When this was over, Miss Paul, in company with a Miss Brown, was sent to make a Suffrage protest at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in the Guildhall. They were arrested, of course, and were sentenced to thirty days in Holloway Jail. They hunger struck, and were forcibly fed. This experience left its mark on Miss Paul’s health for some time; it was several weeks after her release before she was strong enough to travel. But in January, 1910, she sailed for America—and arrived the pale, emaciated creature who so shocked Mabel Vernon.

Lucy Burns tells an amusing story of Alice Paul’s experiences in England. Lord Crewe was to speak at a meeting at Glasgow, and Alice Paul was delegated to represent the Suffragists at that meeting and to heckle the speaker. That meant that she must conceal herself in the building, where the meeting was to take place, the night before. The building was a big, high one—St. Andrew’s Hall, the girls remember the name—and it was surrounded by a high, formidable iron fence. The night before Lucy Burns walked with Alice Paul to the Hall and helped her to climb to the top of this fence. Then Alice Paul jumped down into the grounds and Lucy Burns left her there. There was some building going on at this hall and with great difficulty Alice Paul climbed the scaffolding to the high second story and settled herself on a roof to spend the night. It rained all night; and of course she had no protection against the wet. And after all this discomfort, when daylight broke, laborers coming to work on a neighboring building observed the strange phenomenon of a woman lying on a second-story roof. They reported her and she was ignominously led down and out.

In the summer of 1912, Lucy Burns returned to America. Alice Paul visited her in Long Island. For some time now, Alice Paul had been considering the Suffrage situation of the United States in its national aspect. Here, she broached to Lucy Burns her idea of working for a Constitutional Amendment in Washington—her belief that with six States enfranchised—with six States that could be used as a lever on Congress—the time had come when further work in State campaigns was sheer waste. More even than English conditions, American conditions favored the policy of holding the Party in power responsible in regard to Suffrage. In England, there was no body of women completely enfranchised. In America there were approximately two million women voters who, completely enfranchised, could command a hearing from the politicians. She felt that such a campaign in America would be more productive of result for still another reason. In pursuing that policy in England, the Suffragists were often placed in the embarrassing position of defeating Suffragists and putting in anti-Suffragists. But in America, no matter what Party was in power, only Suffrage senators and representatives could be elected from the Suffrage States. In other words, if, in defeating the Party in power they defeated Suffragists—as was inevitable in the Suffrage States—other Suffragists as inevitably took their places. Moreover, there was no immediate motive urging senators and representatives from the Suffrage States—although often they were individually helpful—to convert senators and representatives of their own Party from non-Suffrage States. Were their Party in jeopardy at home, however, that motive was instantly supplied. Also, Alice Paul thought that it was more dignified of women to ask the vote of other women than to beg it of men.

Alice Paul was the first to apply this policy to the Suffrage situation in the United States. As late as 1917, other Suffrage leaders, as well as members of Congress, were reiterating that there was no such thing as a Party in power in the United States, that that idea was brought from England by Alice Paul and was not adapted to our American institutions.

The two girls concocted a scheme for starting federal work in Washington. They went with it to the National American Woman Suffrage Association, to Anna Howard Shaw, to Harriot Stanton Blatch, to Mary Ware Dennett. Lucy Burns pictures Alice Paul at that last interview—“a little Quakerish figure, crumpled up in her chair and for the first time I noticed how beautiful her eyes were.” Finally Alice Paul went to the Convention of the National American Association at Philadelphia. She talked with Jane Addams. Alice Paul suggested that she be allowed to come to Washington at her own expense to begin work on Congress for the passing of a Constitutional Amendment. She agreed to raise the necessary money. Jane Addams brought this suggestion before the Board of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, urged its acceptance. It was approved. The Board appointed a Committee consisting of Alice Paul, Chairman; Lucy Burns, Vice-chairman; Crystal Eastman. Later in Washington, Mrs. Lawrence Lewis and Mary Beard joined that Committee. Alice Paul went first to Philadelphia and collected money for a few days. Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, who, Miss Paul says, was one of the first to say, “I have always believed that the way to get Suffrage is by a federal amendment,” gave her name; gave money; collected money.

And so—all alone—Alice Paul came to Washington.

III
ALICE PAUL AND LUCY BURNS

Alice Paul is a slender, frail-looking young woman, delicately colored and delicately made. The head, the neck, the long slim arms, and the little hands look as though they were cut out of alabaster. The dense shadowy hair, scooping with deeper accessions of shadow into great waves, dipping low on her forehead and massing into a great dusky bunch in her neck, might be carved from bronze. It looks too heavy for her head. Her face has a kind of powerful irregularity. Its prevailing expression is of a brooding stillness; yet when she smiles, dimples appear. Her eyes are big and quiet; dark—like moss-agates. When she is silent they are almost opaque. When she talks they light up—rather they glow—in a notable degree of luminosity. Her voice is low; musical; it pulsates with a kind of interrogative plaintiveness. When you ask her a question, there ensues, on her part, a moment of a stillness so profound, you can almost hear it. I think I have never seen anybody who can keep so still as Alice Paul. But when she answers you, the lucidity of exposition, the directness of expression! Always she looks you straight in the eye, and when she has finished speaking she holds you with that luminous glow. Her tiny hands make gestures, almost humorous in their gentleness and futility, compared with the force of her remarks.

In the endless discussions at Headquarters—discussions that consider every subject on earth and change constantly in personnel and point of view—she is always the most silent. But when at last she speaks, often there ensues a pause; she has summed it all up. Superficially she seems cold, austere, a little remote. But that is only because the fire of her spirit burns at such a heat that it is still and white. She has the quiet of the spinning top.

As for her mentality ... her capacity for leadership ... her vision.... There is no difference of opinion in regard to Alice Paul in the Woman’s Party. With one accord, they say, “She is the Party.” They regard her with an admiration which verges on awe. Mentally she walks apart; not because she has any conscious sense of superiority, but because of the swiftness, amplitude, and completeness with which her mind marches—her marvelous powers of concentration and her blazing devotion to the work.

I think no better description can be given of her than to quote the exact phrases which her associates use in talking of her. Winifred Mallon speaks of her “burning sincerity.” Helena Hill Weed imputes a “prescience” to her. Anne Martin says, “She is the heart, brain, and soul of the Woman’s Party,” and “Her mind moves with the precision of a beautiful machine.” Nina Allender sums her up as “a Napoleon without self-indulgence.” She said that when at the hearing in 1915, Congressmen tried to tangle Alice Paul they found it an impossibility; everything in Alice Paul’s mentality was so clear; there was nothing to tangle. She added, “There are no two minds to Alice Paul.” “My mother describes her,” she concluded, “as a flame undyingly burning.”

This is Maud Younger’s tribute:

She has in the first place a devotion to the cause which is absolutely self-sacrificing. She has an indomitable will. She recognizes no obstacles. She has a clear, penetrating, analytic mind which cleaves straight to the heart of things. In examining a situation, she always bares the main fact; she sees all the forces which make for change in that situation. She is a genius for organization, both in the mass and in detail. She understands perfectly, in achieving the big object, the cumulative effect of multitudes of small actions and small services. She makes use of all material, whether human or otherwise, that comes along. Her work has perpetual growth; it never stagnates; it is always branching out. She is never hampered or cluttered. She is free of the past. Her inventiveness and resourcefulness are endless. She believes absolutely in open diplomacy. She believes that everything should be told; our main argument with her was in regard to the necessity for secrecy in special cases. She is almost without suspicion; and sometimes with a too-great tendency towards kind judgment in the case of the individual. It seems incredible that with all these purely intellectual gifts, she should possess an acute appreciation of beauty; a gift for pageantry; an amazing sense of humor.

Lucy Burns says:

When Alice Paul spoke to me about the federal work, I knew that she had an extraordinary mind, extraordinary courage and remarkable executive ability. But I felt she had two disabilities—ill-health and a lack of knowledge of human nature. I was wrong in both. I was staggered by her speed and industry and the way she could raise money. Her great assets, I should say, are her power, with a single leap of the imagination, to make plans on a national scale; and a supplementary power to see that done down to the last postage stamp. But because she can do all this, people let her do it—often she has to carry her own plans out down to the very last postage stamp. She used all kinds of people; she tested them through results. She is exceedingly charitable in her judgments of people and patient. She assigned one inept person to five different kinds of work before she gave her up. Her abruptness lost some workers, but not the finer spirits. The very absence of anything like personal appeal seemed to help her.

Lucy Burns at the Head of the “Prison Specialists.”
These Women, All of Whom Served Terms in Jail, Are Wearing
a Reproduction of Their Prison Garb.
Photo Copr. Harris and Ewing, Washington, D. C.

Lucy Burns is as different a type from Alice Paul as one could imagine. She is tall—or at least she seems tall; rounded and muscular; a splendidly vigorous physical specimen. If Alice Paul looks as though she were a Tanagra carved from alabaster, Lucy Burns seems like a figure, heroically sculptured, from marble. She is blue-eyed and fresh-complexioned; dimpled; and her head is burdened, even as Alice Paul’s, by an enormous weight of hair. Lucy Burn’s hair is a brilliant red; and even as she flashes, it flashes. It is full of sparkle. She is a woman of twofold ability. She speaks and writes with equal eloquence and elegance. Her speeches before Suffrage bodies, her editorials in the Suffragist are models of clearness; conciseness; of accumulative force of expression. Mentally and emotionally, she is quick and warm. Her convictions are all vigorous and I do not think Lucy Burns would hesitate for a moment to suffer torture, to die, for them. She has intellectuality of a high order; but she overruns with a winning Irishness which supplements that intellectuality with grace and charm; a social mobility of extreme sensitiveness and swiftness. In those early days in Washington, with all her uncompromising militantism, Lucy Burns was the diplomat of the pair; the tactful, placating force.

I asked a member of the Woman’s Party who had watched the work from the beginning what was the difference between the two women. She answered, “They are both political-minded. They seemed in those early days to have one spirit and one brain. Both saw the situation exactly as it was, but they went at the problem with different methods. Alice Paul had a more acute sense of justice, Lucy Burns, a more bitter sense of injustice. Lucy Burns would become angry because the President or the people did not do this or that. Alice Paul never expected anything of them.”

Both these women had the highest kind of courage. Lucy Burns—although she admits that at Occoquan Workhouse, she suffered from nameless terrors—has a mental poise that is almost unsusceptible to fear. Alice Paul—although she can with perfect composure endure arrest, imprisonment, hunger-striking—acknowledges timidities. She does not like to listen to horrors of any description, especially ghost-stories. They say though that, in the movies, she always particularly enjoyed pirates.

IV
F STREET AND THE EARLY DAYS

When Alice Paul arrived in Washington in December, 1912, she found a discouraging state of things. She had been given the address of Headquarters, but Headquarters had vanished. She had been given a list of people to whom she could turn for help, but most of them had died or moved away. At that time, Mrs. William Kent, who was subsequently to become one of her constant and able assistants, was Chairman of the Congressional Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Two years before, when her husband was elected to Congress, Mrs. Kent came to Washington. When she was asked to become Chairman of this Committee she was told that it would entail no work. She must merely see that the bill was introduced and arrange hearings before the two committees. There was no thought of putting the Amendment through, and no lobbying for it. The National Association allowed Mrs. Kent ten dollars. At the end of the year she returned change. There were a few Suffrage clubs in Washington, but their activity was merely social. Alice Paul saw that the work had to be started from the very beginning. First of all they had to have Headquarters. She hired a little basement room at 1420 F Street. At a formal opening on January 2, 1913, Mrs. William Kent, presiding, introduced Alice Paul as her successor; and a plan for federal work was laid before the Suffragists of the District of Columbia. Of course no one at the meeting guessed that she was present at a historic occasion.

Alice Paul began work at once. Nina Allender says that one Sunday a stranger called. She was wearing “a slim dress and a little purple hat and she was no bigger,” Mrs. Allender held up her forefinger, “than that.” The call was brief and it was unaccompanied by any of the small talk or the persiflage which distinguishes most social occasions. But when the door closed, a few moments later, mother and daughter looked at each other in amazement. Mrs. Evans had promised to contribute to Suffrage a sum of money monthly. Mrs. Allender had promised to contribute to Suffrage a sum of money monthly. Mrs. Evans had agreed to do a certain amount of work monthly. Mrs. Allender had agreed to do a certain amount of work monthly. Their amazement arose partly from the fact that they had not been begged, urged, or argued with—they had simply been asked; and partly from the fact that, before the arrival of this slim little stranger, they had no more idea of contributing so much money or work than of flying. But they agreed to it the instant she requested it of them.

This is a perfect example of the way Alice Paul works. There may be times when she urges, even begs; but they appear to be rare. She often forgets to thank you when you say yes; for she has apparently assumed that you will say yes. She does not argue with you when you say no—but you rarely say no. She has only to ask apparently. Perhaps it is part the terseness with which she puts her request. Perhaps it is part her simple acceptance of the fact that you are not going to refuse. Perhaps it is her expectation that you will understand that she is not asking for herself but for Suffrage. Perhaps it is the Quaker integrity which shines through every statement. Perhaps it is the intensity of devotion which blazes back of the gentleness of her personality and the inflexibility of purpose which gives that gentleness power. At any rate, it is very difficult to refuse Alice Paul.

A member of the Woman’s Party, meeting her for the first time in New York and riding for a short distance in a taxicab with her, says that Alice Paul turned to her as soon as they were alone:

“Will you give a thousand dollars to the Woman’s Party?”

“No, I haven’t that amount to give.”

“Will you give one hundred dollars?”

“No.”

“Will you give twenty-five dollars?”

“No.”

“Will you——”

“I’ll give five dollars.”

Mrs. Gilson Gardner says that one day, in the midst of the final preparations for the procession of March 3, she came to Headquarters. Alice Paul, it was apparent, was in a state of considerable perturbation. At the sight of Mrs. Gardner she said, “There’s Mrs. Gardner! She’ll attend to it.” She went on to explain. “The trappings for the horses have been ruined. Will you order some more? They must be delivered tomorrow night.” Mrs. Gardner says that she had no more idea how to order a trapping than a suspension bridge, but—magic-ed as always by Alice Paul’s personality—she emitted a terrified “Yes,” and started out. She walked round and round the block a dozen times, reviewing her problem, and casting about her looks of an appalled desperation. Suddenly she espied a little tailor shop, and in it, at work, a little tailor. She approached and confided her problem to him. Mrs. Gardner kept shop while he went to Headquarters and got the measurements. He delivered the trappings on time.

Later in the history of the Woman’s Party, Margery Ross came to Washington to spend the winter with a cousin.

She was young and pretty. She established herself there and began to enjoy herself. She was a Suffragist. One day, out of a clear sky, Alice Paul said: “Miss Ross, will you go to Wyoming on Saturday, and organize a State Convention there within three weeks?” “Why, Miss Paul,” the girl faltered, “I can’t. My plans are all made for the winter. I’ve only just got here.” Nevertheless, in a few days, Miss Ross started for Wyoming. There were only eight members of the Congressional Union in that State, and yet three weeks later she had achieved a State Convention with one hundred and twenty delegates.

Perhaps, however, the story which best illustrates Miss Paul’s power to make people work is one of Nina Allender’s. One must remember that Mrs. Allender is an artist. One day Alice Paul telephoned her to ask her if she would go the next day to Ohio to campaign for the Woman’s Party. Mrs. Allender, who had no more expectation of going to Ohio than to the moon, replied: “I’m sorry. It’s impossible. You see, we have just moved. The place is being papered and painted, and I’ve got to select the wallpaper.” “Oh, that’s all right,” Alice Paul suggested. “I’ll send a girl right up there. She’ll pick your paper for you and see that it’s put on.” In the end, of course, Mrs. Allender chose her own paper. But although she did not go to Ohio the next day, she went within a week.

When Alice Paul asked Maud Younger to deliver the memorial address on Inez Milholland, Miss Younger was at first staggered by the idea. “I can’t,” she said. “I don’t know how to do it.”

“Oh,” directed Alice Paul in a dégagé way, “just write something like Lincoln’s Gettysburg address.”

The first Headquarters consisted of one long basement room, partitioned at the back into three small rooms of which two were storerooms, and one Miss Paul’s office. This opened into a court. Later when the Suffragist was published, they had rooms upstairs; sometimes one, sometimes more, according to their funds. By the first anniversary, they had expanded to ten rooms. Later still, they had two whole floors.

Almost all the work was done by volunteers. All kinds of people worked for them. Comparatively idle women of the moneyed class gave up matinées, teas, and other social occasions; stenographers, who worked all day long, labored until midnight. Anybody who dropped into Headquarters for any purpose was put to work. Once a distinguished lawyer from a western city called on business with Alice Paul.

“Would you mind addressing a few envelopes?” asked Alice Paul when the business was concluded. The distinguished lawyer, whose own office was of course manned by a small army of stenographers, smiled; but he took off his coat and went to work.

Alice Paul’s swift, decisive leadership was accepted, unquestioningly. Her word was immutable. One day an elderly woman was observed at a typewriter, painfully picking at it with a stiff forefinger. It was obvious that with a great expenditure of time and energy, she was accomplishing nothing.

“Why are you doing that?” somebody asked curiously.

“Because Alice Paul told me to,” was the plaintive answer.

Most of the work was done in the big front room. The confusion of going and coming of the volunteer workers; the noise of conflicting activity; conversation; telephones; made concentrated thinking almost impossible. The policeman on the beat said that a light burned in Headquarters all night long. That was true. Alice Paul and Lucy Burns used to work far into the morning because then, alone, were they assured of quiet. There were times though when Alice Paul worked all day, all night and sitting up in bed, into the next morning. She never lost time. Later when she picketed the White House, she used to take a stenographer with her and dictate while on picket duty.

Volunteer work is of course not always to be depended upon. It is eccentric and follows its own laws. There would be periods when Headquarters would be flooded with help. There came intervals when it was almost empty. Sara Grogan, herself a devoted adherent, tells how in this case, she used to go out on the streets and ask strangers to help. Volunteer workers—if they were housekeepers or the mothers of families—learned, on their busy days, to give F Street a wide berth. As they had no time to give and as it was impossible to say no to Alice Paul, the streets about Headquarters were as closed to them as the streets of his creditors to Dick Swiveller. It was perhaps this experience which taught Alice Paul what later became one of her chief assets—her power to put to use every bit of human material that came her way; which developed in her that charitable willingness, when this human material failed in one direction, to try it in another; and another; and another. Rarely did she reject any offer of help, no matter how untrained or seemingly untrainable it was. I asked Mabel Vernon how she got so much work—and such splendid work of all kinds—out of amateurs. She answered, “She believed we could do it and so she made us believe it.”

In those days, Alice Paul herself was like one driven by a fury of speed. She was a human dynamo. She made everybody else work as hard as possible, but she drove—although she did drive—nobody so hard as herself. Winifred Mallon said, “I worked with Alice Paul for three months before I saw her with her hat off. I was perfectly astonished, I remember, at that mass of hair. I had never suspected its existence.” For a long time, Alice Paul deliberately lived in a cold room, so that she could not be tempted to sit up late to read. It was more than a year before she visited the book-shop opened by a friend because, she said, “I should be tempted to buy so many books there.” Anne Martin says that she believes Alice Paul made a vow not to think or to read anything that was not connected with Suffrage until the Amendment was passed. There was certainly no evidence of her reading anything else. They make the humorous observation at Headquarters now that the instant the Amendment had passed both Houses, Alice Paul began to permit herself the luxury of one mental relaxation—the reading of detective stories. But in those early days she worked all the time and she worked at everything. Somebody said to Lucy Burns, “She asks nothing of us that she doesn’t do herself,” and Lucy Burns answered dryly, “Yes, she’s annoyingly versatile.”

Not only did Alice Paul ask you to work but after you had agreed to it, she kept after you. “She ‘nagged’ us”-they say humorously at Headquarters. Once, just before leaving for Chicago, Alice Paul appointed a certain young person chairman of a certain committee, with power to select chairmen of ten other committees to arrange for a demonstration when the Suffrage Special returned. This was four weeks off and yet in three days from Chicago came a telegram: “Wire me immediately the names of your chairmen!”

But just as Alice Paul never thanked herself for what she was doing, it never occurred to her to thank anybody else. And perhaps she had an innate conviction that it was egregious personally to thank people for devotion to a cause. However that did not always work out in practice, naturally.

Once a woman, a volunteer, who had worked all the morning reported to Alice Paul at noon. She retailed what she had done. Alice Paul made no comment whatever, but asked her immediately if she would go downtown for her. The woman refused; went away and did not come back. Alice Paul asked a friend for an explanation of her absence. “She is offended,” her friend explained. “You did not thank her for what she did.” “But,” exclaimed Alice Paul, “she did not do it for me. She did it for Suffrage. I thought she would be delighted to do it for Suffrage.” After that, however, Alice Paul tried very hard to remember to thank everybody. Once a party member said to her, as she was leaving Headquarters, “I have a taxi here, Miss Paul—can’t I take you anywhere?” “No,” Alice Paul answered abruptly. She was halfway down the stairs when she seemed to remember something. Instantly she turned back and said, “Thank you!” Another time, somebody else announced that she was offended because Alice Paul had not thanked her, and was going to leave. A friend went to Alice Paul.

“Mrs. Blank is leaving us. I am afraid you have offended her.”

“Where is she?” Alice Paul demanded, “I will apologize at once.”

“For what?” the friend inquired.

“I don’t know,” Alice Paul answered, “anything!”

Like Roosevelt, Alice Paul had a remarkable news sense. She was the joy of newspaper men. Ninety per cent of the Woman’s Party bulletins got publicity as against about twenty per cent of others. A New Orleans editor said they were the best publicity organization in the country. Gilson Gardner compares her to a Belasco, staging the scene admirably but, herself, always in the background.

Later, when the first stress was over, her companions spoke of the joy of work with her. They marveled at that creative quality which made her put over her demonstrations on so enormous a scale and the beauty with which she inundated them.

Maud Younger tells of going with her one night to the Capitol steps, when she painted imaginatively, on the scene which lay outstretched before her, the great demonstration which she was planning: wide areas of static color here, long lines of pulsating color there, laid on in great splashes and welts, like a painter of the modern school. Above all, her companions took a fearful joy in the serene way in which she brushed aside red tape, ignored rules. She would decide on some unexpected, daring bit of pioneer demonstration. Her companions would report to her regarding restrictions. “What an absurd rule,” she would remark, and then proceed calmly to ignore it. “Oh, Miss Paul, we can’t do that!” was the commonest exclamation with which the fellow workers greeted her plans. But always they did do it because she convinced them that it could be done. After the death of Inez Milholland, Alice Paul decided to hold a memorial service in Statuary Hall at the Capitol.

“Oh, Miss Paul, we can’t do that! Memorial services are held there only for those whose statues are in the Hall.” But in the end she did it. When her Committee spoke about it to the officials who have Statuary Hall in charge they said, “One thing we cannot permit. You cannot go up into the gallery because the doors open from that gallery into rooms containing old and valued books and those books might be stolen.” The police said, “No, you must not hang curtains over those openings in case a Senator wants to pass through.” Later the police themselves were helping Alice Paul to place the purple, white, and gold pennants about the gallery; they themselves were piling around their standards, in order to hold them straight, those same old and valued books; they themselves were standing on stepladders to help her hang curtains before those unsealable openings.

When the Suffrage Special returned, Alice Paul decided to hold a welcoming banquet in the dining-room of the beautiful new Washington railroad station. She sent somebody to ask this privilege of the authorities. At first, of course, they said, no, but in the end, of course, they said, yes. The Woman’s Party hired a band to help in the welcome. Alice Paul observed that the man who played the horn was so tall that he obscured an important detail in the decoration. She asked him to stand in another part of the band group. Of course he answered that that was impossible, that the horn always stood where he was standing, but in the end, of course, he stood where Alice Paul told him to stand.

Late in the history of the Woman’s Party, somebody discovered that Alice Paul had never seen an anti-Suffragist. At a legislative hearing during ratification they pointed out one to her—a beautiful one. “She looks like a Botticelli,” Alice Paul said—and gazed admiringly at her for the rest of the hearing.

Her companions marveled, I reiterate, at Alice Paul’s creative power. That did not manifest itself in demonstrations alone. Her policy had creative quality. It had a wide sweep. It moved on wings and with accumulating force and speed. Her work in Washington started slowly, though with sureness of attack, but all the time it heightened and deepened. From 1913 to 1919 it never faltered. Sometimes changes in outside affairs made changes in her self-evolved plan, but they never stopped it, never even slowed it. From the beginning she saw her objective clearly; and always she made for it. Activities that may often have seemed to the callow-minded but the futile militancy of a group of fanatics were part of a perfectly co-ordinated plan. Moreover, she had always reserve ideas and always a buried ace. Sapient members of the Party—those who were close to her—believe that she used only a part of an enormous scheme; that she was prepared far into the future and for any possible contingency. They wonder sometimes how far that creative impulse reached ... what form it would later ... and later ... and later have taken. Yet she proceeded slowly, giving every new form of agitation its chance; prudent always of her reserves. The instant one kind of demonstration exhausted its usefulness, she moved to the next. She wasted no time on side issues, on petty hostilities, on rivalries with other organizations.

But the quality that, above all, informed her other qualities, the quality that she first of all brought to the Suffrage situation, the quality that made her associates regard her with a kind of awe, was her political-mindedness, and political-mindedness was not at all uncommon in the Woman’s Party. It was, perhaps, its main asset, although initiative and efficiency, speed, and courage of the most daring order marked it. But Alice Paul’s political-mindedness had quality as well as quantity. When Hughes was made the Republican nominee for the 1916 election, Alice Paul asked him to declare for National Suffrage. He was exceedingly dubious. It is obvious that, in asking favors of a politician, it is necessary to prove to him that action on his part will not hurt him in the matter of votes and may help him. On this point, Alice Paul said in effect:

“Your Party consists of two factions, the old, stand-pat Republicans and the Progressives. Now, if you put a Suffrage plank in your platform, you will not alienate the Progressives, because the Progressives have a Suffrage plank, and the old stand-pat Republicans will not vote for a Democrat no matter what you put in your platform.”

When in the same election campaign Hughes went West, and the West turned to Wilson, it became evident, however much the Woman’s Party diminished the prestige of Wilson, it could not defeat him. Numerous advisers suggested to Alice Paul to withdraw her speakers from the campaign.

Alice Paul answered, “No; if we withdraw our speakers from the campaign, we withdraw the issue from the campaign. The main thing is to make the Suffrage Amendment a national issue that the Democrats will not want to meet in another campaign.”

After the election, somebody said to her, “The people of the United States generally think you made a great mistake in fighting Wilson. They think your campaign a failure.” Alice Paul answered, “In this case, it is not important what the people think but what the Democratic leaders know.”

The most magical thing about Alice Paul’s political-mindedness was, however, a quality which is almost indescribable. Perhaps it should be symbolized by some term of the fourth dimension—although Helena Hill Weed’s happy word “prescience” comes near to describing it. Maud Younger gives an extraordinary example of this. She says again and again, lobbyists would come back from the Capitol with the news of some unexpected manœuver which perplexed or even blocked them. Congressmen, themselves, would be puzzled over the situation. Again and again, she has seen Alice Paul walk to the window, stand there, head bent, thinking. Then, suddenly she would come back. She had seen behind the veil of conflicting and seemingly untranslatable testimony. She had, in Maud Younger’s own words, cloven “straight to the heart of things.” Often her lobbyists had the experience of explaining to baffled members of Committees in Congress the concealed tactics of their own Committee.

It was small wonder that they were so busy at Headquarters during those first months. They were preparing for a monster demonstration in the shape of a procession which was to occur on March 3, 1913, on the eve of President Wilson’s first inauguration. That procession, which was really a thing of great beauty, brought Suffrage into prominence in a way the Suffragists had not for an instant anticipated. About eight thousand women took part. The procession started from the Capitol, marched up Pennsylvania Avenue past the White House and ended in a mass-meeting at the Hall of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Although a permit had been issued for the procession, and though this carried with it the right to the street, the police failed to protect the marchers as had been rumored they would. The end of the Avenue was almost impassable to the parade. A huge crowd, drawn from all over the country, had appeared in Washington for the Inauguration festivities. They chose to act in the most rowdy manner possible and many of the police chose to seem oblivious of what they were doing. Disgraceful episodes occurred. Secretary of War Stimson had finally to send for troops from Fort Meyer. There was an investigation of the action of the police by a Committee of the Senate. The official report is a thick book containing testimony that will shock any fine-minded American citizen. Ultimately, the Chief of Police for the District of Columbia was removed.

The investigation, however, kept the Suffrage procession in the minds of the public for many weeks. It almost over-shadowed the Inauguration itself.

On this occasion, the banner—in a slightly modified form to be afterwards always known as the Great Demand banner—was carried for the first time. This banner marched peremptorily through the history of the Woman’s Party until the Suffrage Amendment was passed. It said:

WE DEMAND AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE

UNITED STATES ENFRANCHISING THE WOMEN OF THE COUNTRY.

On March 3 there arrived in Washington a man who was that day a simple citizen of the United States. The next day he was to become the President of the United States. As Woodrow Wilson drove from the station through the empty streets to his hotel, he asked, “Where are the people?”

The answer was, “Over on the Avenue watching the Suffrage Parade.”

V
MAKING THE FEDERAL AMENDMENT AN ISSUE

The first great demonstration of the Congressional Committee—the procession of March 3—had been designed to attract the eye of the country to the Suffragists. It succeeded beyond their wildest hopes. Thereafter it became a part of the policy of the Congressional Committee—later, the Congressional Union, and later still, the National Woman’s Party—to keep the people watching the Suffragists. The main work of the Congressional Committee, however, focussed directly on Congress, as of course Congress alone could pass a Constitutional Amendment. They appealed to Congress constantly, by different methods, and through different avenues. They appealed to Congress through the President of the United States, through political leaders, through constituents. It is one way of describing their system to say that they worked on Congress by a series of electric shocks delivered to it downwards from the President, and by a constant succession of waves delivered upwards through the people. This pressure never ceased for a moment. It accumulated in power as the six years of this work went on.

When President Wilson arrived in Washington for his inauguration, the first thing brought to his notice was Suffrage agitation. The Congressional Committee thereafter kept Suffrage constantly before him. If not actually opposed to Suffrage in 1913, Woodrow Wilson had every appearance of opposition; certainly he was utterly indifferent to it. But Alice Paul believed that he was amenable to education on the subject, and she proceeded to educate him. Her theory proved to be true, but the process took longer than she had anticipated. Her methods of course aroused storms of criticism; but in the end they triumphed. The President’s action during the six years’ siege was the attitude of all politicians. That is to say, for a long time he made general statements of a vaguely encouraging nature to the Suffragists, but for a long time he actually did nothing. Every accepted method of convincing him of the justice of the cause was tried. Deputation after deputation waited on him and stated their case. Then he began to move. He came out for Woman Suffrage as a principle; he voted for it in New Jersey but he still believed that the enfranchisement of woman must come by States. In 1917, his position, except for these minor admissions, was exactly that of 1913. As far as the Suffrage Amendment was concerned, he had not budged an inch. The Woman’s Party then tried desperate remedies and afterward more and more desperate remedies. These always produced results—towards the end, immediate results. But at the beginning of this period, the Suffragists found that the instant they relaxed, the President relaxed; his attention departed from Suffrage. This always happened. Then the Congressional Committee began to exert a little more pressure, and the President’s attention came back to Suffrage. In the long attacking process to which Alice Paul subjected him, she put him in untenable position after untenable position. He moved from each one of them by some new concession. In the end, he himself procured the last vote necessary to pass the Amendment in the Senate.

Alice Paul admires Woodrow Wilson profoundly. She admires his powers of leadership; his ideals; his persistence; his steadfastness; his resolution. “He is a man,” she says, “who considers one thing at a time. Suffrage was not in his thought at all until we, ourselves, injected it there. And it was not in the center of his thought until the picketing was well along.” She believed always that, when the President was made to think that he must act in regard to Suffrage, he would put it through.

Immediately after his inauguration, President Wilson announced that a special session of Congress would be called on April 7. At once the Congressional Committee decided to bring to his attention the fact that there was no subject which more urgently demanded treatment in this session than Woman Suffrage. Three deputations were therefore organized to ask him to recommend the Federal Amendment in the message by which he should convene this special session. These deputations—and all subsequent ones—were organized by Alice Paul.

The first deputation waited on President Wilson on March 17. This deputation consisting of four women was led by Alice Paul herself. Although individual Suffragists had interviewed previous presidents, this was the first deputation which had ever appeared with a request for action before a President of the United States. President Wilson’s reply to their remarks was that the subject would receive his most careful attention.

The episode was one of the most amusing of the early history of the Congressional Committee. The President received the deputation in the White House offices. When they entered, they found four chairs arranged in a row with one in front of them, like a class about to be addressed by a teacher. The atmosphere was so tense that all the women felt it and were frightened. Alice Paul spoke first and said that women wanted Suffrage considered by Congress at once, as the most important issue before the country. All spoke in turn. One woman was so terrified that she petrified when her turn came. “Don’t be nervous,” the President reassured her and she finally proceeded. To this first group the President made the statement that so astounded Suffragists all over the country—that Suffrage had never been brought to his attention, that the matter was entirely new. He added that he did not know his position and would like all information possible on the subject.

The Congressional Committee gave him time to give the subject this careful attention, and then a second deputation waited on the President on March 28 to furnish him with the information he lacked. This deputation was led by Elsie Hill, and it represented the College Equal Suffrage League. The President replied to their remarks that this session of Congress would be so occupied with the tariff and the currency that the Suffrage measure could not be considered.

A third deputation waited on the President on March 31. It was led by Dr. Cora Smith King, and it was composed of influential members of the National Council of Women Voters. This delegation told the President that the women voters, who numbered approximately two million, were much interested in the proposed Suffrage Amendment. They also asked him to recommend it in his message. His reply to them was the same as to the college women: that this special session would be so occupied with the tariff and currency that the Suffrage measure could not be considered.

In the meantime, the Congressional Committee had notified Suffragists all over the United States that a Suffrage Amendment would be introduced in this special session of Congress; asking them to urge the President to indorse Suffrage in his forthcoming message; and to request their Representative in Congress to support Suffrage when it was introduced. Letters poured into Washington from the remotest corners of the country.

This was the beginning of that intimacy which the Congressional Committee—afterwards the Congressional Union, afterwards the National Woman’s Party—established with its sympathizers and members all over the country. In the nature of things—the political situation being changeable, and demanding always subtle, delicate, and often swift and decisive handling—the actual work at Washington had to be planned and executed by a limited number. But those few must be able, forceful, and swiftly executive spirits. Their adherents all over the country were however kept as closely and constantly as possible in touch with that changing situation.

In addition, the Congressional Committee did all possible preliminary work with the incoming members of this Congress. The result on the Progressive members was encouraging. Although there was a Woman Suffrage Committee in the Senate, there was none in the House. Thitherto, the Suffrage question had been sent to the Judiciary Committee, the graveyard of the House. As a result of the work of the Congressional Committee, the Progressive Caucus, which met before the new Congress assembled, gave its unqualified indorsement to the proposal to create a Woman Suffrage Committee in the House. The Congressional Committee canvassed the Democratic members of the House and urged them to take similar action. The Democratic Caucus, however, entirely ignored the question.

Having brought Suffrage to the attention of the new President by the monster procession of March 3, the Congressional Committee proceeded to bring it to the attention of the new Congress by a second great demonstration. This was in support of the Federal Amendment, and it took place on the opening day of the special session of the Sixty-third Congress, April 7, 1913. Delegates from each of the 435 Congressional districts in the United States assembled at Washington, bringing petitions from the men and women of their districts, asking for the passing of the Amendment. After the mass-meeting, the delegates marched, each behind her State banner, to the doors of Congress. The procession was greeted at the steps of the Capitol by a group of Congressmen. One of them welcomed the petitioners in a speech pledging his support to their cause. They then led the delegation into the Rotunda, where a long receiving line of members of Congress repeated his welcome. The Suffragists took places which had been set aside for them in the galleries of the Senate and the House and watched the presentation of the petitions.

Immediately after the petitions were presented, Representative Mondell (Republican) of Wyoming, and Senator Chamberlain (Democrat) of Oregon introduced the Suffrage Amendment. In the Senate this resolution was referred to the Woman’s Suffrage Committee, and in the House to the Judiciary Committee. Named, as is customary, after those who introduced it, the measure was known first as the Chamberlain-Mondell Amendment, and later as the Bristow-Mondell Amendment. It was in reality the famous Susan B. Anthony Amendment—first introduced into Congress in 1878 by Senator Sargent of California—exactly as she drew it up. The Anthony Amendment runs as follows:

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by any State on account of sex.

Section 2. Congress shall have power by appropriate legislation to enforce the provisions of this article.

On that same day—April 7, 1913—resolutions were introduced in the House to create a Woman Suffrage Committee similar to that in the Senate. This was only a tiny gain; for that Committee was not actually created until September, 1917. But a little later occurred what was a decided gain—the Senate created a Majority Committee on Woman Suffrage. The Woman Suffrage Committee in the Senate had been a Minority Committee thitherto. That meant that, as its Chairman belonged to the Minority Party, its existence was purely nominal.

All these four months, the five women who constituted the Congressional Committee had been working at a tremendous speed. They had been made into a Committee on the understanding that the Committee would itself raise the money necessary for its work. Four months’ experience had convinced them that the work of securing a Federal Amendment required a much greater effort than five women, working alone, could possibly give to it. The various State associations composing the National American Woman Suffrage Association were engrossed in their State campaigns. Little could be expected from them in the way of personal service or financial aid. When the Congressional Committee appealed to individuals, they found that these individuals were giving their time and service to the particular State in which they lived. The Congressional Committee realized that they must have an organization back of them to assist with work and money, whose sole object was national work. The Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage was therefore formed by the Congressional Committee, with the approval of the President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

The Congressional Union described itself as “a group of women in all parts of the country who have joined together in the effort to secure the passage of an Amendment to the United States Constitution enfranchising women.” It offered its members the privilege of making the offices at Washington their headquarters while in the city. It adopted colors—at the happy suggestion of Mrs. John Jay White—of purple, white, and gold. The Union grew rapidly, and was later admitted as an auxiliary to the National American Woman Suffrage Association. The Congressional Committee acted as the Executive Committee of this Congressional Union. Throughout the year the Union was of great assistance to the Committee. It reinforced its work in every possible way.

The Suffrage resolution was now before the Committees in both Houses. The Congressional Union concentrated on securing a hearing before the Senate Committee. Every effort was made to focus the attention of Suffragists and of the country at large on the situation. A hearing was arranged before the Committee, at which Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, presided. In addition to this public hearing, the members of the Senate Committee were interviewed. And pursuing its course of keeping Suffragists in touch with what was happening at Washington, the Congressional Committee circularized Suffragists all over the country with letters which informed them that the resolution was before the Senate Committee, and asked them to write to this Committee urging a favorable report.

After six months of work occurred the first political triumph of the Congressional Union. On May 13, the Senate Committee voted to make a favorable report upon the Suffrage resolution. There, however, matters rested—with a favorable vote, but still in the Committee. The Suffragists, however, besieged the Committee with requests to make the report and finally, on June 13, the report was made to the Senate—the first favorable one in twenty-one years. This put the measure on the Senate Calendar.

Immediately the Congressional Union turned its attention to proving to the Senate how widespread was the support of this measure in the United States.

A petition was circulated in every State in the Union. It asked for the passage of the Amendment, and was addressed to the Senate. Thousands of signatures were obtained. During June and July, these petitions were collected and brought to Washington. Their arrival at the Capitol on July 31 was the occasion of the third great demonstration. The petitioners came from every State, and they came in every possible way. They came by train, by motor, by caravan. They held meetings and collected signatures to the great petition in the districts through which they passed. All the delegations converged in the little town of Hyattsville, outside Washington. There—at the village grandstand, they were met by members of the Congressional Union and of the Woman Suffrage Committee of the Senate. The reading clerk of the House of Representatives announced the members of the delegations as they arrived in their several motors. Members of the Senate Committee addressed them on behalf of the Congressional Committee of the Congressional Union. The Mayor of Hyattsville delivered to them the key of the town. Mary Ware Dennett replied for the delegates, and accepted the key of the town from the Mayor. The automobiles then formed into a procession, of which the first motor carried the members of the Senate Committee. The long line of cars, fluttering flags, and pennants, and each bearing the banner of its State delegation, proceeded from Hyattsville along the old Bunker Hill Road to the Capitol. There, the petitions were handed to the various Senators. Three Senators spoke against Suffrage, but twenty-two in presenting the petitions spoke in favor of it.

This was the second triumph of the Congressional Union. Suffrage was debated in Congress—the first time since 1887.

The Congressional Committee now turned its attention to the work of convincing Congress of the interest in the Amendment of the women voters of the West. A Convention of the National Council of Women Voters was held in Washington on August 13, 14, and 15. Emma Smith Devoe, National President of the Council, and Jane Addams, National Vice-President, presided. Upon a motion by Jane Addams, the Council passed the following Resolution, strongly indorsing the Amendment:

Whereas at the present time one-fifth of the Senate, one-seventh of the House, and one-sixth of the electoral vote comes from equal Suffrage States; and

Whereas, as a result of this political strength in Congress, due to the fact that four million women of the United States are now enfranchised, there is great hope of the passage in the near future of the Federal Suffrage Amendment; therefore be it

Resolved, That the National Council of Women Voters concentrate its efforts upon the support of this Federal Amendment.

The Rules Committee of the House of Representatives on August 14 then gave the Council a hearing on the question of creating a Suffrage Committee in the House.

The Convention ended in a mass-meeting at the Belasco Theatre, which, in spite of the midsummer heat of Washington, was crowded to the doors. The platform was filled with Congressmen from Suffrage States. The women speakers iterated and reiterated the demand of the women voters of the West for immediate action by Congress, and the Congressmen supported them.

In addition to these—processions, pilgrimages, petitions, deputations, and hearings, hundreds of public meetings organized by the Washington Headquarters—were held everywhere. A constant series of deputations from their own constituencies besieged the members of the Senate. All this was making its inevitable impression on Congress. Those days of the Sixty-third Congressional Session were crowded ones. The President had told the Suffragists that so much time must be given to the tariff and the currency that there would be none left for Women Suffrage. Yet more time was devoted to the Woman Suffrage question than ever before. On September 18, Senator Wesley L. Jones of Washington delivered a speech in the Senate, in which he urged that the Suffrage Resolution should be passed. In the House, a number of Representatives formerly opposed to the resolution now declared that they would support it when it came before them.

In the meantime, the tariff and currency had finally been disposed of. A new Congress was to convene on December 1. Ever since his inauguration, Suffrage agitation of a strong, dignified, and convincing character had been brought to the President’s attention. Suffragists hoped, therefore, that the President would feel that he could recommend the Suffrage Amendment to this new Congress. They decided, however, to present the matter to him in a forcible way. A fourth deputation of seventy-three women from his own State of New Jersey came to Washington in the middle of November.

This delegation arrived on Saturday afternoon, November 15. Until Monday morning, they tried in every possible way to arrange for an appointment with the President at the White House. Representative McCoy of New Jersey endeavored to assist them in this matter. Their efforts and his efforts were fruitless.

Monday morning, at 10 o’clock, Alice Paul telephoned the Executive Office that, as it was impossible to find out what hour would suit the convenience of the President, the delegation was on its way to the White House. She explained that they would wait there until the President was ready to receive them, or would definitely refuse to do so. The clerk at the Executive Office declared over the telephone that it would be impossible to see the President without an appointment. He assured Alice Paul that such a thing had never been done. Representative McCoy called up Headquarters, and reported his failure to secure an appointment. On being told that the delegation was going to call on the President anyway, he protested vehemently against its proceeding to the White House without the usual official preliminaries. Alice Paul’s answer was a single statement,—“The delegation has already started.”

In double file the seventy-three New Jersey women marched through Fifteenth Street, through Pennsylvania Avenue, past the Treasury Department, and up to the White House grounds. And, lo, as though their coming spread paralyzing magic, everything gave way before them. Two guards in uniform stood at the gate. They saluted and moved aside. The seventy-three women marched unchallenged through the grounds to the door of the Executive Office. An attendant there requested them courteously to wait until after their two leaders should be presented to the President by his Secretary.

The request that these seventy-three New Jersey women made to President Wilson was that he should support the Constitutional Amendment enfranchising women. President Wilson replied: “I am pleased, indeed, to greet you and your adherents here, and I will say to you that I was talking only yesterday with several Members of Congress in regard to the Suffrage Committee in the House. The subject is one in which I am deeply interested, and you may rest assured that I will give it my earnest attention.”

It is to be seen that the President’s education had progressed—a little. To previous delegations, he had stated merely that the tariff and currency would take so much of the attention of Congress that there would be no time for the Suffrage question. In advocating a Suffrage Committee in the House, he had made an advance—tiny, to be sure, but an advance.

In the last month of 1913 occurred in Washington the Forty-fifth Annual Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. The Convention opened with a mass-meeting at the Columbia Theatre. Dr. Anna Howard Shaw presided. Jane Addams and Senator Helen Ring Robinson were the principal speakers. At the opening meeting of the Convention, Lucy Burns repeated the warning of the Congressional Union to the Democratic Party:

The National American Women Suffrage Association is assembled in Washington to ask the Democratic Party to enfranchise the women of America.

Rarely in the history of the country has a party been more powerful than the Democratic Party is today. It controls the Executive Office, the Senate, and more than two-thirds of the members of the House of Representatives. It is in a position to give us effective and immediate help.

We ask the Democrats to take action now. Those who hold power are responsible to the country for the use of it. They are responsible, not only for what they do, but for what they do not do. Inaction establishes just as clear a record as does a policy of open hostility.

We have in our hands today not only the weapon of a just case; we have the support of ten enfranchised States—States comprising one-fifth of the United States, one-seventh of the House of Representatives and one-sixth of the electoral vote. More than three million, six hundred thousand women have a vote in Presidential elections. It is unthinkable that a national government which represents women, and which appeals periodically to the Suffrages of women, should ignore the issue of their right to political freedom.

We cannot wait until after the passage of the scheduled administration reforms. These reforms, which affect women, should not be enacted without the consent of women. Congress is free to take action on our question in the present Session. We ask the administration to support the Woman Suffrage Amendment in Congress with its full strength.

On December 4, a second meeting was held before the Rules Committee of the House on the creation of a Woman Suffrage Committee in the House of Representatives. Ida Husted Harper reminded the Rules Committee at this hearing that nine States and one Territory had enfranchised their women, and that nearly four million women could vote at a Presidential election. Mary Beard showed by an analysis of the vote which sent President Wilson to the White House that the Democratic strength was already threatened, and how it could strengthen itself by espousing the Suffrage Cause.

Notwithstanding the appeal of the seventy-three New Jersey women, the President’s message to Congress on December 2 failed to make any mention whatever of the Suffrage Amendment.

In consequence, a Committee representing each State in the Union was appointed by the Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association to wait upon the President and protest. President Wilson was prevented by illness from seeing any visitors during the week the Convention met. The Convention, therefore, authorized the appointment of a Committee of fifty-five delegates, who should remain in Washington until the President was able to see them. The interview took place the following Monday at 12:30. This was the fifth deputation to President Wilson. The President said, according to the Washington Post of December 9:

I want you ladies, if possible—if I can make it clear to you—to realize just what my present position is. Whenever I walk abroad, I realize that I am not a free man; I am under arrest. I am so carefully and admirably guarded that I have not even the privilege of walking the street. That is, as it were, typical of my present transference from being an individual with his mind on any and every subject, to being an official of a great Government and, incidentally, or so it falls out under our system of Government, the spokesman of a Party. I set myself this strict rule when I was Governor of New Jersey and have followed it as President, and shall follow it as President, that I am not at liberty to urge upon Congress policies which have not had the organic consideration of those for whom I am spokesman.

In other words, I have not yet presented to any legislature my private views on any subject, and I never shall; because I conceive that to be a part of the whole process of government, that I shall be spokesman for somebody, not for myself.

When I speak for myself, I am an individual; when I speak for an organic body, I am a representative. For that reason you see, I am by my own principles shut out, in the language of the street, from starting anything. I have to confine myself to those things which have been embodied as promises to the people at an election. That is the strict rule I set for myself.

I want to say that with regard to all other matters I am not only glad to be consulted by my colleagues in the two Houses, but I hope that they will often pay me the compliment of consulting me when they want to know my opinions on any subject. One member of the Rules Committee did come to ask me what I thought about this suggestion of yours of appointing a special committee for consideration of the question of Woman Suffrage, and I told him that I thought it was a proper thing to do. So that as far as my personal advice has been asked by a single member of the Committee, it has been given to that effect. I wanted to tell you that to show you that I am strictly living up to my principles. When my private opinion is asked by those who are co-operating with me, I am most glad to give it; but I am not at liberty until I speak for somebody besides myself to urge legislation upon the Congress.

Dr. Shaw stepped forward to address the President within the circle of deeply attentive hearers, spoke very quietly and firmly in her clear and beautiful voice.

“Of the two—the President and Dr. Shaw,” said one of the spectators afterward, “Dr. Shaw spoke with greater authority, as if with the consciousness of a perfectly just cause. The President was less assured, more hesitating.”...

“As women are members of no political Party, to whom are they to look for a spokesman?” Dr. Shaw asked.

“You speak very well for yourself,” said the President, laughing.

“But not with authority,” said Dr. Shaw earnestly.

The deputation then left the President’s Office.

Editorially in the Suffragist of December 13 appears:

The rule that President Wilson has so strictly set for himself, is a rule not laid down in the Constitution nor in the practice of preceding Presidents, nor in the President’s own acts, nor in his own words.

Nevertheless, the statement of President Wilson to the President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association is of great value to the Suffrage movement. The President therein declares that he is only the spokesman of his Party and that he will initiate only legislation which has been endorsed by his Party. He puts the whole question of Federal legislation for Woman Suffrage directly up to the Democratic Party in Congress, and instructs Suffragists throughout the country to hold that Party responsible for the fate of the Constitutional Amendment enfranchising women. He has outlined for us, therefore, the policy of bringing effective pressure to bear on the national Democratic Party from all parts of the country, in an effort to make them realize soon what they must recognize finally, that it is more expedient for them as a Party to advocate Suffrage than to ignore and resist it.

Nevertheless, the President’s education had progressed another step. For the first time, he felt the necessity of explaining—and by implication—of excusing himself.

This visit to the President completed the principal work of the year 1913 on the part of the Congressional Committee and the Congressional Union.

Many things had been done in this year, in addition to what has already been indicated. A district of Columbia Branch of the Men’s League for Woman Suffrage was organized; this was composed largely of Congressmen. Lectures, receptions, tableaux, benefits, teas had been given, and a Suffrage School opened in Washington. Seven large mass-meetings, exclusive of Convention meetings, were held at Washington. An uninterrupted series of indoor and outdoor meetings, numbering frequently from five to ten a day, constantly reminded Congress of the Suffrage question. A summer campaign, carried on by Mabel Vernon and Edith Marsden, covered the resort regions of New Jersey, Long Island, and Rhode Island, and extended into the South.

Twenty-seven thousand dollars had been raised at the Washington Headquarters, and spent. And there were results. The chief one was that it focussed the attention—not only of Suffragists themselves—but of politicians and the country at large on the Federal Amendment.

June, 1913, brought Presidential Suffrage to the women of Illinois. Only Presidential Suffrage; but that was very important. Astute women everywhere were watching the situation; drawing their own and independent conclusions.

Toward the end of the year, the Congressional Union established an official weekly organ, the Suffragist, edited by the well-known publicist, Rheta Childe Dorr. The first issue appeared on November 15, and it has been published ever since.

Lucy Burns, whose editorials were marvels of ironic logic, of forceful condensed expression, succeeded Mrs. Dorr. Then came Vivian Pierce, a trained newspaper woman; Sue White, well-known to Suffragists for her splendid work in Tennessee; Florence Boeckel, able, efficient, untiring. Pauline Clarke, Clara Wold, Elizabeth Kalb contributed supplementing editorial work.

The Suffragist has reported the activities first of the Congressional Union, and next of the Woman’s Party. It is an extremely entertaining periodical, always interesting, often brilliant, essentially readable. It contains editorials, reports, sketches, verse, cartoons. Many famous people have contributed articles. The reports of the workers in the Woman’s Party make much the most interesting reading however. Many famous artists have given it drawings. The most pertinent, though, are those contributed by a member of the Congressional Union—Nina Allender.

Mrs. Allender’s fertile and original pencil has traced during the entire eight years of its history a running commentary on the progress of the Woman’s Party. She has a keen political sense. She has translated this aspect of the feminist movement in terms that women alone can best appreciate. Her work is full of the intimate everyday details of the woman’s life from her little girlhood to her old age. And she translates that existence with a woman’s vivacity and a woman’s sense of humor; a humor which plays keenly and gracefully about masculine insensibility; a humor as realistic, but as archly un-bitter as that of Jane Austen. It would be impossible for any man to have done Mrs. Allender’s work. A woman speaking to women, about women, in the language of women.

There is no better place than here to emphasize the work of the Press Department. It will be apparent to the reader, as the story of the Woman’s Party unrolls itself, that the work of this department was very difficult and very delicate. The problem was twofold—to keep the action of the party always in the public eye and to bring out the underlying policy. This was not easy when the demonstrations of the Woman’s Party were of the kind whose initial effect was to antagonize. Nevertheless, the Press Department minimized that antagonism and minimized by a propaganda which was as restrained in expression as it was vivid in description. Newspaper men generally felt that they could depend on the Woman’s Party for news. Florence Brewer Boeckel, who has been press chairman since 1915, is responsible for this magnificent press campaign. But she has not lacked help. Eleanor Taylor Marsh, Alice Gram, Beulah Amidon, and Margaret Grahan Jones, have given her steady assistance.

Early in the year 1914, the Congressional Union resigned from the National American Woman Suffrage Association. The constitution of the National Association permitted a Suffrage body to join it in one of two ways. By one, a new clause imposed a five per cent tax in dues upon its budget. By another, it paid annually one hundred dollars dues. The Congressional Union felt that a five per cent tax upon its budget would seriously cripple its work. The Union offered to become an associated body. The National Association refused this offer, and the Congressional Union, therefore, became an independent organization.

VI
PRESSURE ON CONGRESS

The Suffragist of January 24, 1914, carried the following editorial. In it is repeated the policy which the Congressional Union had in the beginning adopted—that of holding the party in power responsible.

The policy of the Congressional Union is to ask for a Woman Suffrage Amendment from the Party in power in Congress, and to hold them responsible for their answer to its request.

This policy is entirely non-partisan, in that it handles all Parties with perfect impartiality. If the Republicans were in power, we would regard them in their capacity as head of the Government as responsible for the enfranchisement of women. If the Progressives or Socialists should become the majority Party, and control the machinery of Congress, we would claim from them the right to govern ourselves, and would hold them responsible for a refusal of this just demand.

Today the Democrats are in power. They control the executive office, the Senate, and the House. They can, if they will, enfranchise women in the present session; their refusal to do so establishes a record which must necessarily be taken into consideration by women when the Party seeks the re-indorsement of the people at the polls.

This policy simply recognizes the effect of our American system of Government. Ours is a government by Parties. The majority by secret caucus, by the control of committees, by the power of patronage, by their appeal to Party responsibility, by the interest of Party solidarity, control the legislation of the House. The present government recognizes this method of administration with especial, and indeed admirable, frankness. It owes much of its popularity today to its willingness to assume full responsibility for all the legislation enacted in Congress; for whatever is done, and what is not done. The two great measures of the last session, tariff and currency, passed rapidly and successfully through both Houses by the frank use of Party discipline.

Let us by all means deal directly with the people who can give us what we want. The Democrats have it in their power to enfranchise women.... This is not only our most logical method of work, but it is also the most economical and expeditious. Assuming that the Democrats yield nothing in the present session, we can, when Congress closes, concentrate our forces on those points where the Party is weakest, and thus become a force worth bargaining with. At the present moment, the Senate is the weakest point in the Democratic armor. To defeat even a few Democratic Senators in November, 1914, would make a serious breach in the Party organization.... If, on the other hand, we set out to attack every anti-Suffragist in Congress, we should have hundreds to defeat, and every man would be safe in whose constituency we did not organize. Imagine that, if at the end of arduous labor, we had contrived to defeat a number of Democratic anti-Suffragists, and an equal number of Republican anti-Suffragists, we should by immense sacrifice have completely nullified our own efforts, and left the strength of the Parties just where it was before....

What should we do in our enfranchised States, if we confined ourselves to the plan of supporting individual Suffragists and attacking individual anti-Suffragists, irrespective of their Party affiliations? All the candidates for office in the enfranchised States are Suffragists. Is it suggested that we be inactive in the only places where we possess real political power? Our problem at the present moment is to use the strength of women’s votes in national elections so as to force attention to the justice of our claim from the present administration....

But the Congressional Union cannot make it too clear that we are not opposed to any Party today. We are asking the Democrats to help us; we are awaiting their answer. We will frame no policy for or against them or any other Party until this session closes, and the great opportunity of the present Administration has come to an end. We entertain steady and undiminished hopes that the Administration will recognize the justice and expediency of women’s claims to self-government. The movement is making immense strides in every part of the country; our present voting strength is great, and will undoubtedly be increased in the present year. It takes no great imaginative reach for the ordinary Congressman to foresee the day when Woman Suffrage will be an established fact throughout these United States.

There is already a strong sentiment in the Upper House for Woman Suffrage, and a rapidly-growing interest in it in the Lower House. We have no reason to expect wilful obstinacy from our American Congressmen. We Americans are adaptable and imaginative, and can shape ourselves with peculiar ease to coming events. The Democratic Party, if it is wise, will pass our Amendment through Congress in the present session.

The first-year Congressional Committee, consisting of Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, Mary Beard, Crystal Eastman, and Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, continued their work in 1914 with the Congressional Union under the name of the Executive Committee of the Congressional Union; but it was increased by the addition of Mrs. William Kent, Elsie Hill, Mrs. Gilson Gardner, Mrs. Donald R. Hooker, and Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont.

The year opened with a meeting at the home of Mrs. William Kent in Washington. Plans for the coming year were submitted at that meeting. Among them was one for a nation-wide demonstration on May 2, in which resolutions supporting the Federal Amendment were to be passed. This was to be followed by a great demonstration in Washington on May 9, at which those resolutions should be presented to Congress. Among them also was another plan for the appeal to the women voters of the West for political action in support of a Federal Amendment, if that Amendment had not been passed before the next election. Nine thousand dollars were pledged on the spot for these undertakings. The work on the great demonstration of May 2 began at once, and was pushed rapidly during the opening months of the year.

In the meantime the work on Congress was continued. It will be remembered that a proposal for the formation of a Suffrage Committee in the House had been before the Rules Committee since April 7, 1913, that it had been the subject of two hearings arranged by the Congressional Union. The first action in regard to this was simple and decisive. The Democratic Members of the Rules Committee, who constituted a Majority Committee, met first, apart from their Republican and Progressive colleagues, and, by a vote of four to three, decided against the formation of a Suffrage Committee. They then went through the form of a meeting with the Republican and Progressive Members on January 24. The resolution, creating the Suffrage Committee, was lost by a vote of four to four.

The Congressional Union, however, realized that the final power with regard to Congressional action was with the Democratic Caucus. They determined therefore—in order that the responsibility for inaction or opposition might be placed on the Democrats as a Party—immediately to appeal to that Caucus to overturn the decision of the Rules Committee. The necessary signatures were secured to a petition calling for the Democratic Caucus of the House to take up the question of the formation of this much-desired Suffrage Committee. The Caucus met on February 3, 1914, to consider this subject. The Democratic Party had a choice of two courses. It could order the Rules Committee, which it of course controlled, to give a favorable report to the House on the resolution creating a Suffrage Committee. Or it could give no order at all of this kind; in which case it revealed itself as responsible for the adverse action of the Rules Committee.

What it did was to adopt a substitute resolution for the resolution providing for the creation of a Committee of Woman Suffrage.

That substitute resolution was: “Resolved, that the question of Woman Suffrage is a State and not a Federal question.”

This was the first time in the history of the country that either of the two great Parties had ever caucused on Woman Suffrage.

Editorially the Suffragist put the situation pithily to the women of America:

This is the definite lining up of the Democratic Party against Woman Suffrage as a national measure.... Unless the Democratic Party reconsiders its present position, Suffragists must necessarily regard that Party as an obstruction in the path of their campaign.... They (the Democratic Party) have three votes to lose in the Senate and they lose control of this government. There are nine States in which women vote for United States Senators. The result in the Senatorial elections in these States will undoubtedly depend largely upon the action on Suffrage taken by the Democratic Party.

Although the Congressional Union welcomed any simplification of the Congressional machinery as by the creation of a Suffrage Committee, its object was to secure action on the Suffrage Amendment. Since April 7, 1913, the Amendment had been before the Judiciary Committee in which it had been introduced by Representative Mondell. The Congressional Union asked for a hearing on the Amendment before this Committee. March 3, 1914, was set for that event.

Thitherto, these hearings had been dreary occasions, sparsely attended. There was the half-circle of Committee members, a trifle perfunctory in its attitude, the scattered, tiny audience, very little interested or stirred; the few Suffragists pleading—eloquently, it is true—but pleading; using the inevitable Suffrage arguments, unanswerable, but threadbare. The hearing of March 3 was very different. The Committee was electrically alert.... They listened intently.... For the first time at a Congressional hearing, propagandistic argument did not appear. The Suffragists appealed to the Committee to report the Suffrage Resolution to the House—not as a matter of justice to women—but as practical politics. They pointed out to the Committee that the women voters of the West would hold the Democratic Party responsible for the refusal of this Committee to make that report.

In the meantime, highly important things had been going on in the Senate. It will be remembered that the Suffrage Resolution had been placed upon the Senate Calendar in June, 1913. Ever since that date, it had been awaiting a vote. It could be voted on any time up to the close of the Sixty-third Congress (March 3, 1915).

At the beginning of the year 1914, more votes were pledged in its favor than had carried the Income Tax in the Senate, and sentiment in its favor was steadily increasing among the Senators. Moreover, the prospect that the Referendum elections of the coming autumn would add to the number of Suffrage States promised an increase of Suffrage strength in the Senate. There remained—as it transpired—a whole year before that Congress adjourned, in which the work of obtaining the vote could have gone on. These features of the situation made the Congressional Union most desirous that the Resolution should not be voted upon until every possible vote was won. However, Senator Ashurst, who had reported the Bill to the Senate, had it made “unfinished business” on March 2, 1914. It is the spirit of “unfinished business” that it must be brought up and voted on. In spite of the vigorous protests of the Congressional Union, and of many Suffragists in all parts of the country, it was brought to the vote on March 17. A two-thirds vote was necessary to carry it. It received thirty-five; a majority, it is true, of one vote; but failing of the necessary two-thirds majority by eleven. The Congressional Union blamed the Democratic leaders entirely for this premature vote, as they were fully informed that a vote at that time would mean defeat.

However, this was a memorable moment. It was the first time since 1887 that Suffrage had been voted upon in the Senate. And from the moment on March 2 when it was made “unfinished business” until March 17, when the vote was taken, the Senate debated it almost continuously.

On that same day—March 2—Senator Shafroth of Colorado introduced a resolution providing for a new Suffrage Amendment to the Federal Constitution. This was to become famous as the Shafroth-Palmer Resolution. It offered a path to the enfranchisement of women incredibly cluttered and cumbered. It reads:

Section 1. Whenever any number of legal voters of any State to a number exceeding eight per cent of the number of legal voters voting at the last preceding General Election held in such State shall petition for the submission to the legal voters of said State of the question whether women shall have equal rights with men in respect to voting at all elections to be held in such State, such question shall be so submitted; and if, upon such submission, a majority of the legal voters of the State voting on the question shall vote in favor of granting to women such equal rights, the same shall thereupon be deemed established, anything in the constitution or laws of such State to the contrary notwithstanding.

Compare this with the simplicity and directness of the original Susan B. Anthony Amendment:

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Section 2. Congress shall have power by appropriate legislation to enforce the provisions of this article.

The National American Woman Suffrage Association immediately rallied to the support of the Shafroth-Palmer Amendment; they continued to give to it their undivided work for two years.

But the Congressional Union—I quote the vigorous words of the Report of the Congressional Union for the year 1914:

The Congressional Union immediately announced its determination to support only the original Amendment, known popularly as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, and in Congress as the Bristow-Mondell Amendment. It maintained that to work at the same time for two Suffrage amendments to the National Constitution would enable the enemies of the bill to play one against the other. Believing that one amendment only must be supported, it felt that it was wise to support the amendment which would give Suffrage itself rather than an amendment which, after the same expenditure of effort would give only another method of obtaining Suffrage—that is, would merely establish the initiative on the Suffrage question. The Union, moreover, feeling that the bane of the Suffrage cause at present was too many and not too few referendums, held that to pass a Federal Amendment—which would inaugurate thirty-nine referendum campaigns would involve the movement in a dissipation of resources such as its enemies would most deeply desire. Finally, it held that the passage of one Suffrage amendment to the National Constitution would make it extremely difficult to pass another; so that if the Shafroth Bill became a law, it would probably indefinitely postpone the passage of the Anthony Amendment, and doom the movement to years of referendum campaigns.

Not at all daunted by the action of the Senate in defeating the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, nor by the introduction there of the Shafroth-Palmer Amendment, the Congressional Union at once secured the re-introduction in the Senate of the defeated Amendment. The measure was out of the Senate only twenty-two hours. The following day, Senator Bristow introduced a resolution identical with the one which had been lost. On April 7, it was again reported from the Woman Suffrage Committee, and took its place on the Calendar of the Senate. This was just a year from the date of its original introduction to this Senate. It was the second favorable report of the Senate Committee in one Congress.

Here we leave the work with Congress for a while, and take up the matter of the education of the President. We must go back a few months.

VII
PRESSURE ON THE PRESIDENT

Although five different deputations—Congressional Union members; college women; women voters; New Jersey women; women from all the States—had called on the President, it was apparent that he had undergone no change in his attitude toward the Suffrage question. On February 2, 1914, therefore, another deputation, the sixth—and an exceedingly interesting one—marched to the White House. This deputation included women from the industrial world and they represented more than fifty trades in which women are engaged. They carried banners which bore quotations from the President’s New Freedom: “We Have Got to Humanize Industry,” and “I Absolutely Protest Against Being Put into the Hands of Trustees.”

At the mass-meeting, preliminary to waiting upon the President, Melinda Scott, an organizer of the Women’s Trade Union League, said:

No one could be serious when they maintained that the ballot will not help the working woman. It has helped the working-man to better his conditions and his wages. Men of every class regard the ballot as their greatest protection against the injustice of other men. Women even more than men need the ballot to protect their especial interests and their right to earn a living.... We want a law that will prohibit home-work.... We hear about the sacredness of the home. What sacredness is there about a home when it is turned into a factory, where we find a mother, very often with a child at her breast, running a sewing machine? Running up thirty-seven seams for a cent. Ironing and pressing shirts seventy cents a dozen, and children making artificial flowers for one cent a gross. Think of it—one hundred and forty flowers for one cent. Taking stitches out of coats, helping their mothers where they have finished them for six cents a coat. These women have had no chance to make laws that would protect themselves or their children....

The organized working woman has learnt through her trade union the power of industrial organization, and she realizes what her power would be if she had the ballot.... Men legislating as a class for women and children as a class have done exactly what every other ruling class has done since the history of the world. They discriminate against the class that has no voice. Some of the men say, “You women do not need a ballot; we will take care of you.” We have no faith in man’s protection.... Give us the ballot, and we will protect ourselves.

This army of four hundred arrived safely, with perfect police escort, at the doors of the White House. They were amazed to learn that the President would see only twenty-five of the women. He had said he would “receive the delegation.” The selected number then went in, the remaining three hundred and seventy-five waited in line outside.

Margaret Hinchey, a laundry worker of New York, said:

Mr. President: It is shaking and trembling, I, as a laundry worker, come here to speak in behalf of the working women of the United States. I have read about you, and think you are fair, square, on the level, and so much a real democrat, that I believe when it is made clear to you how much we working women, who organize in the factories, the mills, the laundries, and the stores, can help every true democrat, you will use your power to wipe out this great injustice to women by giving us a vote.

Rose Winslow said:

Mr. President: I am one of the thousands of women who work in the sweated trades, and have been since a child, who give their lives to build up these tremendous industries in this country, and at the end of the years of work, our reward is the tuberculosis sanatorium or the street. I do not think to plead with you, Mr. President, nor make a regular speech. I do not speak to Presidents every day; it hasn’t been my job, so I don’t do it very gracefully.

Here the President interrupted Miss Winslow by stating that he did not see why she should be so nervous, as Presidents are perfectly human. Miss Winslow then continued:

Yes, I know, and that is why I can speak to you, because you are human and have a heart and mind and can realize our great need. I do not need to remind you how we women need the ballot, etc.