Part One

1913 and 1914

------------------------------------------------------------------------

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?

------------------------------------------------------------------------

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 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.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

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.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

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: