Section 2. Congress Shall Have Power, by Appropriate Legislation, to

enforce the provisions of this article.

The National Woman’s Party, convinced that the enfranchisement of women is the paramount issue, pledges itself to use its united vote to secure the passage of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, irrespective of the interests of any national political Party, and pledges its unceasing opposition to all who oppose this Amendment.

Sara Bard Field closed that first meeting with an eloquent invocation to the spirit of freedom, quoting from Alfred Wallace the words he used just before his death:

All my long life and investigations have shown me that there is one supreme force needed in the universe for growth, either material or spiritual, physical or mental—and that force is freedom.

An evening session of the Woman’s Party Convention, held also at the Blackstone Theatre, was made interesting and picturesque by the presence of representatives of all the political Parties.

The Convention appointed women representing the Woman’s Party, to speak at the Republican, Democratic, and Progressive Conventions.

Incidental to the Convention a big “Suffrage First” luncheon was given in the Auditorium Hotel. So many hundreds of applicants for tickets had to be refused that finally tickets of admission for standing room were sold. Every inch of steps was occupied when the luncheon began. Remarkable speeches were made by Rheta Childe Dorr, the famous publicist, and one of the early editors of the Suffragist; by Crystal Eastman, one of the founders of the Congressional Union, brilliant speaker, writer, and editor; Inez Milholland Boissevain, who, before the year was out, was to end, with such tragic abruptness, a vivid and devoted life; Helen Keller, whose unexampled achievement is known to the whole world.

The publicity which the Woman’s Party received was extraordinary. The Convention lasted three days and the meetings were packed. Arthur Brisbane pointed out the difference between the clock-like organization of the women and the hap-hazard organization of the men.

Ida M. Tarbell, describing the Woman’s Party in the New York World of June 7 and 8, 1916, says:

The new Woman’s Party had permitted representation of five different political Parties to appear before them and briefly present their various claims to the Suffrage of women. “We do not ask you here to tell us what we can do for your Parties, but what your Parties can do for us,” Miss Martin told the speakers in a tone of exultant sweetness which sent a cheer from shore to shore of the human sea that filled the house....

“Votes don’t matter,” Benson shouted at them, “nothing but education matters. Women, like men, don’t know how to vote. Nevertheless, if you have nothing but ignorance you have a right to contribute that. As for the Socialists, we shall continue to vote for Suffrage, as we always have done, if no women vote for us.”

Much as they gasped at Benson’s defiance of their “power,” they took it like sports, and sent him to his seat with rounds of cheers and long waving of their lovely banners. (They have a wonderful eye for color, these new politicians.)

But when Mr. Hammond—confident and bland—assured them the Republican Party offered them protection from invaders, they jeered at him. He did not understand that they are their own protectors and war scares are not going to stampede them.

Another thing that the gentlemen must have noticed—used as they are to the same game—and that was, that no amount of eloquence made the faintest scratch on the rock-ribbed determination of the women. The one and only thing they wanted to know, so the women told the men after they had gone through their ordeals, was whether or no they proposed to support the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. That was the only possible interest they had in what the gentlemen could say. Was it, yes or no?

The Republican and Progressive Conventions began in Chicago the day the Woman’s Party Convention ended. The delegates elected by the women spoke before the Resolution Committee of both these Conventions.

The hearing before the Republicans was held in the vast Coliseum. Representatives of the National American Woman Suffrage Association addressed the Committee. Anti-Suffragists followed. In closing, their last speaker said:

“We will now leave you to the tender mercies of those who demand.”

The Woman’s Party then took the hearing in charge.

The hearing of the Woman’s Party before the Progressive Convention was held at eight o’clock the same evening in the South Parlor of the Auditorium Hotel.

Later, members of the Woman’s Party went to St. Louis where the Democrats were holding their Convention. When they arrived they found there was no room in the hotel which could be used for Headquarters. Most of them, a little discouraged, went in to breakfast. While they sat at the table, a newspaper man approached. “Where are your Headquarters?” he asked. “Here,” Alice Paul answered instantly. After breakfast she chose a table in a conspicuous part of the hotel lobby; covered it with Woman’s Party literature, hung a purple, white, and gold banner back of it. The hotel, seething with the activity due to the fact that Democratic Headquarters was there, took no notice of what she was doing. Nobody said anything to her. Gradually Alice Paul hung purple, white, and gold banners everywhere in that corner of the lobby. Nobody remonstrated. Perhaps by this time, the hotel authorities decided that her color scheme was decorative. At any rate, the Woman’s Party maintained that corner as Headquarters. It was a conspicuous spot; everybody had to pass it to go to the elevator. They could not have hired a place so advantageously situated.

Newspaper cartoonists began to introduce the new Party into their pictures. Alice Paul in the figure of a little deer, big-eyed and wistful, stood timidly among a group which included the elephant, the donkey and the bull moose.

The Woman’s Party found every sentiment in favor of Suffrage among the Democratic delegates until Secretary of War Baker arrived from Washington bringing the platform drawn up by Wilson. Then the atmosphere changed. Newspaper men, who told the Woman’s Party delegates of the encouraging condition earlier, now said: “There is no chance of getting what you want.”

When later the Resolutions Committee met, representatives from the Woman’s Party waited all night outside the door in a last effort to influence the members of the Committee going in and out of the Committee Rooms. The entire platform was accepted, with very slight changes, as it had been originally drafted in Washington. It contained a recommendation that the question of Woman Suffrage be confined to the States.

The Progressives endorsed National Suffrage. This was the first time a national political Party had ever endorsed the Federal Amendment; for although the Progressives, the Socialists, and the Prohibitionists had endorsed the principle of Suffrage in 1912, they had apparently never heard of the principle of Federal Suffrage. The platforms of the other two Parties were unsatisfactory as far as the Federal Amendment was concerned.

The Republican Suffrage plank was:

The Republican Party, reaffirming its faith in a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, as a measure of justice to one-half the adult population of this country, favors the extension of Suffrage to women, but recognizes the right of each State to settle this question for itself.

The Democratic Suffrage plank ran:

We recommend the extension of the franchise to the women of the country by the States upon the same terms as to men.

These two planks also marked a great advance; for it was the first time the major political Parties had ever mentioned Suffrage.

Now every effort of the Woman’s Party was directed to getting the Presidential candidates, Wilson and Hughes, to come out for National Suffrage.

Alice Paul’s campaign, conducted on Hughes, was particularly vigorous. It was nation-wide in its extent. She sent telegrams all over the country asking people to urge this upon him. She sent numberless women to plead with Hughes. She sent women to Roosevelt and to other prominent Republicans and Progressives to get them to use their influence with Hughes. Every Republican member of Congress was lobbied to write to Hughes or to see him.

Hughes found himself bombarded. Letters inundated him from all over the nation. Newspapers besieged him with editorials. Most important of all, Alice Paul herself went to him. Then it was that she presented an unanswerable argument which has already been quoted.

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.

At a great mass-meeting in Carnegie Hall, Hughes accepted the nomination. He did not, however, satisfactorily mention Woman Suffrage. That evening an unknown man came up to the box where Alice Paul was sitting and introducing himself as Hughes’s representative, asked her what she thought of the program. “Utterly unsatisfactory,” said Alice Paul; “it did not mention Federal Suffrage.” That night Alice Paul and other Suffragists went early to the public reception given to Hughes at the Hotel Astor. They told every Senator, Congressman, and plain individual whom they knew there: “When you congratulate Mr. Hughes, tell him how disappointed you were that he did not mention Federal Suffrage.”

In a telegram sent on August 1 to Senator Sutherland of Utah, Hughes declared himself in favor of the Federal Amendment. It was the first time any Presidential candidate of either of the two big political Parties had publicly declared the Federal Amendment a part of his policy.

* * * * *

On June 19, President Wilson sent to Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, the following letter, which is a reply to a telegram from her asking what the Suffrage plank in the Democratic platform meant:

MY DEAR MRS. CATT:

I was away from the city and did not get your telegram of June sixteenth promptly.

I am very glad to make my position about the Suffrage plank adopted by the convention clear to you, though I had not thought that it was necessary to state again a position I have repeatedly stated with entire frankness. The plank received my entire approval before its adoption and I shall support its principle with sincere pleasure. I wish to join my fellow-Democrats in recommending to the several States that they extend the Suffrage to women upon the same terms as to men.

Cordially and sincerely yours,

WOODROW WILSON.

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STILL MORE PRESSURE ON THE PRESIDENT

ON June 12, 1916, Sara Bard Field sent a telegram to President Wilson. Mrs. Field was a Democrat, but she was, first of all, a Suffragist. In that telegram, she urged the President to support the Suffrage Amendment. She promised, if the Democratic Party would do this, that she herself would gladly campaign for him in the Western States without remuneration. She promised him also the services of at least five other influential Democratic women. The President answered:

DEAR MRS. FIELD:

Your frank and kindly telegram of June 12 sent from St. Louis was warmly appreciated. I have been in frequent conference with my Party associates about a platform declaration with regard to Woman Suffrage and sincerely hope the outcome has been acceptable to you.

In haste, with sincerest appreciation,

Cordially yours,

WOODROW WILSON.

On June 21, President Wilson received Mrs. D. E. Hooker of Richmond, who came to him as a delegate from the Virginia Federation of Labor. Mrs. Hooker placed in the President’s hands resolutions passed by the Federation, demanding favorable action on the Federal Amendment this session.

“This is very strong,” said President Wilson.

The Suffragist of July 1 says:

Mrs. Hooker then urged upon the President, very movingly, the humiliation, from the standpoint of a Southerner and a woman, of going before the entire population of men now enfranchised, and begging them each personally to approve of woman’s right to full citizenship. Tears came into her eyes as she spoke, and the President seemed rather touched. He said consolingly that she must not mind the criticism she encountered in a good work. “Every one in the public eye,” the President said, “is deluged with criticism. You simply must do what you believe to be right.”

Mrs. Hooker went on to explain the political difficulties of the State by State road to National Woman Suffrage.

President Wilson seemed very little impressed by these facts. “Every good thing,” he said, “takes a great deal of hard work.”

Mrs. Hooker made a very strong point of the indefensible behavior of the House Judiciary Committee in blocking the Suffrage Amendment and refusing to allow the representatives of the people an opportunity to vote upon it. “Whatever one may think of Woman Suffrage,” she said, “tying the Amendment up this way before an election is wrong; and the blame will fall squarely on the Democratic Party.”

“You must see the members of the Judiciary Committee about that,” said the President, with a considerable tactical skill. “I do not think I should interfere with the action of a Committee of Congress.”

“Have you never done it before, Mr. President?” asked Mrs. Hooker. The President explained that he had done it only under pressure of a national emergency.

The interview lasted about half an hour. The President’s manner was kindly and friendly, but he made it very plain that he interpreted the Democratic platform plank to mean the limitation of the Suffrage movement to State activities, and that he was still opposed to the Federal Suffrage Amendment.

Later, Mrs. Field replied to the President’s letter:

I am sorry to have to tell you that not only is the platform declaration not acceptable to me, and to hundreds of thousands of voting women of the West, but that we also greatly deprecate the interpretation which you gave of this plank to Mrs. D. E. Hooker of Richmond.

It is my sincere hope as a Democratic woman that you will not allow any menace to the Democratic Party in the fall election through your unwillingness to face the desire of the West for speedy action upon the Susan B. Anthony Amendment.

On July 3, a delegation representing the Woman’s National Democratic League, composed, according to the Washington Times, of some of the most distinguished ladies of the Congressional and official sets, went to inform the President that the League had raised a thousand dollars as a contribution towards his re-election. Afterwards, Mrs. F. B. Moran, a grand-niece of Martha Washington, and it may be almost unnecessary to state, a member of the Congressional Union, requested a five minute interview with the President.

Mrs. Moran said:

I am really afraid for my Party. The women in the West are far superior to us. They have power, and they know how to use it. There are four million of them, and they are heartily in favor of the Federal Suffrage Amendment because they do not wish to be disfranchised when they pass beyond the limits of their own State. It is not a question of their threatening us. It is a question of our realizing what they are going to do. You can get the Suffrage Amendment through Congress, and, if you do not do it, these women will regard you as responsible.

President Wilson said, in answer, that he could not interfere with the action of Congress. He believed that Suffrage should be established on the secure foundation of separate State action. “You should work from the bottom up, not from the top down,” the President said. “Women should be patient, and continue to work in the admirable way they have worked in the past.”

* * * * *

On July 4, President Wilson reviewed a Labor parade in connection with the laying of the corner-stone of the Labor Temple of the American Federation of Labor in Washington, D. C., and at its close he addressed the marchers. He had just declared that he stood for the interests of all classes, when Mabel Vernon, who sat on the platform a few feet away, called in a voice which has a notably clear, ringing quality, “Mr. President, if you sincerely desire to forward the interests of all the people, why do you oppose the national enfranchisement of women?”

The President answered, “That is one of the things which we will have to take counsel over later.”

When the President was closing his speech, Mabel Vernon called again; “Answer, Mr. President, why do you oppose the national enfranchisement of women?”

The President did not answer.

The Secret Service men with almost an exquisite courtesy gently hurried Miss Vernon away.

* * * * *

On July 24, another deputation of prominent Democratic women called on the President. The deputation included Mrs. George W. Lamont, Harriot Stanton Blatch, Mina Van Winkle, Helen Todd. I quote the Suffragist:

Mrs. Lamont, who introduced the group to President Wilson, said: “I have come to you, Mr. President, as a Democratic woman. I used to be first a Democrat and then a Suffragist; now I am a Suffragist first.” She asked the President if he realized how painful a position he created for Democratic women when he opposed the enfranchisement of their sex and forced them to choose between their Party allegiance and their loyalty to women throughout the nation.

Mrs. Blatch told President Wilson of the strength of the sentiment for Woman Suffrage she had found in the West on her recent trip in the Suffrage Special through the equal Suffrage States and of the extraordinary difficulties she had experienced in her own life trying to win Suffrage by amending the constitution of her State.

“I am sixty years old, Mr. President,” said Mrs. Blatch, “I have worked all my life for Suffrage; and I am determined that I will never again stand up on the street corners of a great city appealing to every Tom, Dick, and Harry for the right of self-government. When we work for a Federal Amendment, we are dealing at last with men who understand what we are talking about and can speak to us in our tongue. We are not asking for an easy way to win the vote. It is not easy to amend the United States Constitution. We are asking for a dignified way; and we ought to be able to rely on the chivalry of our representatives, particularly of the southern representatives, to accord to women a self-respecting method of working out their enfranchisement.”

Miss Helen Todd told the President of her experience in a State campaign in Texas, when Democratic members of the Legislature refused to submit the question to the voters, saying bluntly that they controlled eleven votes in the upper house and that those eleven could keep the Suffrage Amendment “tied up” indefinitely. “Women go to Democrats in Congress and are told they must appeal to State Legislatures. They go to Democratic State Legislatures, who refuse to allow the electors of their own State to vote upon the question at all. What are women to do, Mr. President?” said Miss Todd, “when they are played with in this cat and mouse fashion?”

The interview was in many respects interesting. President Wilson did not mention the States’ rights formula. He said he was unable to help the Suffrage Amendment in Congress because his Party was opposed to it. It was the President’s theory, he explained, that a Party leader should not go so far in advance of his adherents as to withdraw himself from them, and make united action impossible upon the other issues before the country.

The impression was strongly conveyed, however, that this opposition from the President’s Party was not necessarily permanent. “In four years, or in two years,” said Mr. Wilson, impressively but vaguely, “the situation might be different. At present many members of the Democratic Party are opposed to Woman Suffrage on account of the negro question.” “But,” said one of his visitors, “if women were given the vote throughout the United States the percentage of the white vote to the negro vote would be increased.” “You have not explained that to the men in Congress,” President Wilson said.

In answer to the statement that the Democratic Party would lose the support of women in the West and therefore of western electoral votes if they persisted in opposing women’s national enfranchisement, President Wilson said he did not believe women would vote in a national election on the Suffrage issue. “If they did that,” said Mr. Wilson, with superb and quite unconscious insolence, “they would not be as intelligent as I think they are.”

The women came away from this meeting convinced that the President would do nothing for the Federal Amendment.

On September 8, however, President Wilson spoke at Atlantic City before a Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. It was the first time he had ever addressed a Suffrage meeting. That was, of course, in itself, significant. I quote the Suffragist:

I have found it a real privilege to be here tonight and to listen to the address which you have heard. Though you may not all of you believe it, I would a great deal rather hear some one else speak than speak myself, but I should feel that I was omitting a duty if I did not address you tonight and say some of the things that have been in my thoughts as I realized the approach of this evening and the duty that would fall upon me.

The astonishing thing about this movement which you represent is not that it has grown so slowly, but that it has grown so rapidly. No doubt for those who have been a long time in the struggle, like your honored president, it seems a long and arduous path that has been trodden, but when you think of the cumulating force of this movement in recent decades, you must agree with me that it is one of the most astonishing tides in modern history.

Two generations ago, no doubt, Madam President will agree with me in saying it was a handful of women who were fighting this cause. Now it is a great multitude of women who are fighting it. And there are some interesting historical connections which I would like to attempt to point out to you. One of the most striking facts about the history of the United States is that at the outset it was a lawyer’s history.

There was a time when nobody but a lawyer could know enough to run the government of the United States, and a distinguished English publicist once remarked, speaking of the complexity of the American government, that it was no proof of the excellence of the American Constitution that it had been successfully operated, because the American could run any constitution. But there have been a great many technical difficulties in running it.

And then something happened. A great question arose in this country which, though complicated with legal elements, was at the bottom a human question, and nothing but a question of humanity. That was the slavery question, and is it not significant that it was then, and then for the first time, that women became prominent in politics in America? Not many women. Those prominent in that day are so few that you can almost name them over in a brief catalogue, but nevertheless, they then began to play a part in writing not only, but in public speech, which was a very novel part for women to play in America; and after the Civil War had settled some of what seemed the most difficult legal questions of our system, the life of the nation began not only to unfold but to accumulate.

Life in the United States was a comparatively simple matter at the time of the Civil War. There was none of that underground struggle which is now so manifest to those who look only a little way beneath the surface. Stories such as Dr. Davis has told tonight were uncommon in those simpler days.

The pressure of low wages, the agony of obscure and unremunerated toil did not exist in America in anything the same proportions that they exist now. And as our life has unfolded and accumulated, as the contacts of it have become hot, as the populations have assembled in the cities, and the cool spaces of the country have been supplanted by the feverish urban areas, the whole nature of our political questions has been altered. They have ceased to be legal questions. They have more and more become social questions—questions with regard to the relations of human beings to one another—not merely their legal relations, but their moral and spiritual relations to one another.

And this has been most characteristic of American life in the last few decades, and as these questions have assumed greater and greater prominence, the movement which this association represents has gathered cumulative force. So that if anybody asks himself, “What does this gathering force mean?” if he knows anything about the history of the country, he knows that it means something that has not only come to stay, but has come with conquering power.

I get a little impatient sometimes about the discussion of the channels and methods by which it is to prevail. It is going to prevail, and that is a very superficial and ignorant view of it which attributes it to mere social unrest. It is not merely because the women are discontented. It is because the women have seen visions of duty, and that is something which we not only cannot resist, but, if we be true Americans, we do not wish to resist.

So that what we have to realize in dealing with forces of this sort is that we are dealing with the substance of life itself.

I have felt as I sat here tonight the wholesome contagion of the occasion. Almost every other time that I ever visited Atlantic City I came to fight somebody. I hardly know how to conduct myself when I have not come to fight against anybody, but with somebody. I have come to suggest, among other things, that when the forces of nature are steadily working and the tide is rising to meet the moon, you need not be afraid that it will not come to its flood.

We feel the tide: we rejoice in the strength of it and we shall not quarrel in the long run as to the method of it. Because, when you are working with masses of men and organized bodies of opinion, you have got to carry the organized body along. The whole art and practice of government consists, not in moving individuals, but in moving masses. It is all very well to run ahead and beckon, but, after all, you have got to wait for the mass to follow. I have not come to ask you to be patient, because you have been, but I have come to congratulate you that there was a force behind you that will, beyond any peradventure, be triumphant and for which you can afford a little while to wait.

This speech is, of course, often exquisitely phrased. However, it promised nothing. The Woman’s Party was not deceived by it.

* * * * *

It is to be seen that President Wilson was moving—slowly, to be sure; one cautious foot carefully planted before the other cautious foot moved—in the right direction. He had progressed a measurable distance from the man who just after his inauguration admitted he had never considered the subject of Suffrage. However, he still held to his idea of the “State by State” progress for the enfranchisement of women. But he was to change even in that, as will subsequently be seen.

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VII

THE SECOND APPEAL TO WOMEN VOTERS

ON August 10, 11, and 12, of 1916, the newly-formed National Woman’s Party held a conference at the Hotel Antlers in Colorado Springs, to formulate a policy for the coming presidential campaign.

In Washington, Senators and Representatives read avidly the newspaper accounts of this convention.

Politically, it was a tremendously impressive gathering. Prominent women came from all the Western States to decide how they should endeavor to mobilize the women’s votes. Greatly alarmed at this drifting away of members, the Democratic Party sent prominent Democratic women to plead with them not to leave the Party and to represent to them that Peace was more important than Suffrage. The Republicans sent important Republican women to plead with them to give their support to Hughes since he had come out for the Federal Suffrage Amendment.

Finally the Democratic leaders appealed to the President to counteract the attacks being made on the Party, on the score of its Suffrage record. The President, thereupon, despatched to the Thomas Jefferson Club of Denver the following letter which was read at a banquet the last day of the Conference.

THE WHITE HOUSE,

WASHINGTON, D. C., August 7, 1916.

MY DEAR FRIENDS:

I wish I could meet you face to face and tell you in person how deeply I appreciate the work your organization has done and proposes to do for the cause of democracy and popular government.

I am told that yours was the first woman’s Democratic voters’ organization in America, and I am sure that as such it must have been the instrument of impressing your convictions very deeply upon the politics of your State.

One of the strongest forces behind the Equal Suffrage sentiment of the country is the now demonstrated fact that in the Suffrage States women interest themselves in public questions, study them thoroughly, form their opinions and divide as men do concerning them. It must in frankness be admitted that there are two sides to almost every important public question, and even the best informed persons are bound to differ in judgment concerning it. With each difference in judgment, it is not only natural, but right and patriotic, that the success of opposing convictions should be sought through political alignment and the measuring of their strength at the polls through political agencies. Men do this naturally, and so do women; though it has required your practical demonstration of it to convince those who doubted this. In proportion as the political development of women continues along this line, the cause of Equal Suffrage will be promoted.

Those who believe in Equal Suffrage are divided into those who believe that each State should determine for itself when and in what direction the Suffrage should be extended, and those who believe that it should be immediately extended by the action of the national government, by means of an amendment to the Federal Constitution. Both the great political Parties of the nation have in their recent platforms favored the extension of Suffrage to women through State action, and I do not see how their candidates can consistently disregard these official declarations. I shall endeavor to make the declaration of my own Party in this matter effectual by every influence that I can properly and legitimately exercise.

Woman’s part in the progress of the race, it goes without saying, is quite as important as man’s. The old notion, too, that Suffrage and service go hand in hand, is a sound one, and women may well appeal to it, though it has long been invoked against them. The war in Europe has forever set at rest the notion that nations depend in time of stress wholly upon their men. The women of Europe are bearing their full share of war’s awful burden in the daily activities of the struggle, and more than their share as sufferers. Their fathers and husbands and sons are fighting and dying in the trenches; but they have taken up the work on the farms, at the mill, and in the workshop and counting houses. They bury the dead, care for the sick and wounded, console the fatherless, and sustain the constant shock of war’s appalling sacrifices.

From these hideous calamities we in this favored land of ours have thus far been shielded. I shall be profoundly thankful, if, consistently with the honor and integrity of the nation, we may maintain to the end our peaceful relations with the world.

Cordially and sincerely yours,

WOODROW WILSON.

To the officers and members of the Jane Jefferson Club of Colorado.

The Woman’s Party did not care for whom the women cast their protest vote—Republicans, Socialists, Prohibitionists—they cared only that women should not vote for the Democrats. They knew if this protest vote was large enough, whoever was elected would realize that opposition to Suffrage was inexpedient.

At Colorado Springs the National Woman’s Party passed the following resolutions:

Resolved that the National Woman’s Party, so long as the opposition of the Democratic Party continues, pledges itself to use its best efforts in the twelve States where women vote for President to defeat the Democratic candidate for President; and in the eleven States where women vote for members of Congress to defeat the candidates of the Democratic Party for Congress.

Immediately the campaign began. It was the biggest campaign—the most important ever waged by the Woman’s Party. A stream of organizers started for the Western States to prepare the way for the speakers. How hard, and how long, and how intensively these girl organizers worked will never be known because, in the very nature of things, there could be no adequate record of their efforts. Then came a stream of speakers, relay after relay—convinced, informed, experienced—and inspired. Among them were Harriot Stanton Blatch, Sara Bard Field, Ida Finney Mackrille, Mrs. William Kent, Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, Helen Todd, Maud Younger, Rose Winslow, and Gail Laughlin. The brilliant, beautiful Inez Milholland Boissevain, doomed soon to die so untimely but so glorious a death, was appointed special flying envoy to make a twelve mile swing through the twelve western Equal Suffrage States; to bring to the enfranchised women of the West an appeal for help from the disfranchised women of the East.

The campaign of 1916 was characterized by the swiftness of attack and efficiency of method which characterized the campaign of 1914, but it was carried out on a much larger scale. In Washington, Headquarters boiled ... bubbled ... seethed....

From Washington there sifted into the West tons of campaign literature: miles of purple, white, and gold banners; acres of great across-the-street streamers. In the West itself, Woman’s Party speakers addressed every kind of meeting known to our civilization: indoor meetings; outdoor meetings; luncheons; banquets; labor unions; business men’s organizations; in churches, factories, theatres; at mining camps, county fairs. They took advantage of impromptu meetings in the streets; small ready-made meetings at clubs; large advertised mass-meetings. And Inez Milholland’s activities as a flying envoy—and in that, her last flight she did fly—were the climax of it all.

The slogan of the Wilson party was, “He kept us out of war.” The slogan of the Woman’s Party developed, “He kept us out of Suffrage.”

The Democrats, remembering the results of the campaign of 1914, were far from indulgent of this small army, the members of which were all generals.

In Denver, Elsie Hill the Woman’s Party organizer was arrested and hurried to the police station in a patrol wagon. The only charge against her was that she had distributed literature telling the Democratic record on Suffrage.

In Colorado Springs, the Federal Amendment banner was “arrested” and locked up for the night in jail.

In Chicago, described by the Chicago Tribune as the “pivotal point of the 1916 election,” this hostility was much more violent. The day that Wilson spoke there a hundred women, some of them carrying inscribed banners, stationed themselves at the entrance to the auditorium where he was to appear. They were attacked by groups of men, who tore their banners out of their hands, and demolished them. Several women were thrown to the ground, and one, still clinging to the banner, was dragged across the street.

This was followed by an attack upon Minnie E. Brooke, one of the Woman’s Party speakers. She was alone, walking quietly down Michigan Boulevard. She had a small purple, white, and gold flag in her hand, and was wearing the regalia of the Woman’s Party. Suddenly two men darted up to her, and tried to tear her colors away. In the struggle she was thrown down and would have fallen in front of an automobile had not a hotel employee run to her assistance.

However, in the out-of-way country places in the Western States, the Woman’s Party speakers were received with that hearty hospitality, that instant and instinctive chivalry, which marks the West. In this campaign, they made a point of appearing in the State and County Fairs which characterized the late summer and early fall months.

On Frontier Day, at the Douglas County Grange at Castle Rock, Colorado, Elsie Hill spoke—to a grandstand crowded with people—between the end of the relay race (in which the riders changed horses and saddles) and the beginning of the steer-roping contest. On the stand were massed men, women, and children. Just over the fence crowded hundreds of cowboys and farmers.

Street processions also characterized this campaign. At night in Salt Lake City occurred an extraordinary parade—a river of yellow. The squad of mounted policemen who headed the procession wore the purple, white, and gold regalia of the Woman’s Party. Marching women carried lighted yellow Japanese lanterns. The people who filled the automobiles carried yellow lanterns. The huge Amendment banner was yellow. Yellow banners were strung across the streets.

Billboards and posters appeared everywhere which adjured voters not to support Wilson or any Democratic candidates for Congress. In Tucson and Prescott, Arizona, these great banners were surreptitiously cut down. In California, the Democrats placed counter placards beside these disturbing posters. In San Francisco, armed patrols guarded the two conflicting posters in one hotel lobby.

The Woman’s Party speakers took advantage of all kinds of situations. In one town, Maud Younger found that a circus had arrived just ahead of her. There was no adequate hall for a meeting; and so the circus men offered her their tent; they even megaphoned her meeting for her. In another town, a County Fair was being held. Maud Younger appealed to the clowns to give her a chance to speak, and they let her have their platform and the spot-light while they were changing costumes. In San Francisco, Hazel Hunkins scattered thousands of leaflets from an aeroplane flying over the city. Red Lodge, Montana, sent to the train, which brought Abby Scott Baker to them, a delegation of members of the Grand Army of the Republic, the leader bearing a large American flag. They conducted her in state through the town to the hall where she was to speak.

Perhaps no campaign was more interesting than that of Rose Winslow in Arizona. Vivian Pierce, whose experienced newspaper hand on the Suffragist helped to make that paper the success it so swiftly became, thus describes her work:

Rose Winslow represented the workers. She spoke for the exploited women in Eastern industry. In her own person to her audiences she typified her story of those imprisoned in factories and slums, unable to fight their own battles. Her words had the authenticity of an inspired young evangelist. She herself had come up out of that darkness; and the men of the mines and lumber camps, the women of the remote Arizona towns, listened to her with tears pouring down their faces. One does not see Eastern audiences so moved. At Winslow ... this girl, pleading for working women, the most exploited class in industry, appealed to the men of the great Santa Fé railroad shops that animate the life of that remote region on the edge of the “Painted Desert.” Rose Winslow had been warned that if she spoke at this town, she would be “mobbed” by the Wilson Democrats. After her impassioned story, told one noon hour, the men of the shops crowded around this young woman from the East, “one of our own people,” as one man said, and asked her what they could do for the women of the East....

In the remote copper camps around Jerome and Bisbee, the story of the industrial workers who have merely asked for a chance to help themselves, made a deep impression on the foreign-born voters of this section. There were Poles, Finns, and Lithuanians in the great audience held in that copper town that is the working-man’s annex to Bisbee. That audience both laughed and cried with Rose Winslow, and then crowded around to greet her in her own language.

From the vividly colored fastness of the miners’ villages in this wild mountain region, to border towns like Nogales, though but a short step geographically, the temper and character of the cities change.... In places like Nogales, the soldiers who could not go home to vote turned the Woman’s Party meetings into near-riots, so anxious were these victims of a peace administration to hear what the ladies had to say about Wilson. The soldiers registered their approval by helping take up collections, though even the provost guard could not remove them to give space to citizens able to register their protests.

An event equally picturesque marked the closing of the campaign on the night of Sunday, November 5, on the platform of the Blackstone Theatre, Chicago. There, Harriot Stanton Blatch, acting as the spokesman of the disfranchised women of the East, called up by long-distance telephone a series of mass-meetings, one in each of the twelve Suffrage States and repeated their message—a final appeal to the women voters of the West to cast their ballots on the following Tuesday against President Wilson.

* * * * *

The result of the election is summed up in the Suffragist of November 11:

In Illinois, the only State where the vote of women is counted separately, over seventy thousand more women voted against Mr. Wilson than for him....

The reports indicate that the Woman’s Party campaign was as successful in holding the woman’s vote in line in the other eleven States as in Illinois. While ten of these States went for Wilson, they did not do so, as has been claimed, by the woman’s vote. Mr. Wilson received in these States almost the solid Labor vote, the Progressive, and the farmer’s vote. The popular majority which Mr. Wilson received in the twelve Suffrage States amounted only to twenty-two thousand one hundred seventy-one out of a popular vote, according to the latest returns, of more than four million, eight hundred and ten thousand in the same States. This does not include the Socialist and Prohibition vote, which was very heavy in some of the Western States....

We were not concerned with the result of the election. Ours was a campaign in which it made no difference who was elected. We did not endorse any candidate. We did not care who won. We were not pro-Republican, pro-Socialist, pro-Prohibition—we were simply pro-woman. We did not endeavor to affect the result in the non-Suffrage States. What we did try to do was to organize a protest vote by women against Mr. Wilson’s attitude towards Suffrage. This we did. Every Democrat who campaigned in the West knows this. The Democratic campaign in the West soon consisted almost entirely of an attempt to combat the Woman’s Party attack.

Tribute to the strength of the Woman’s Party campaign is contained in the remark of a woman who had in charge the campaign of the Democratic women voters. Out of six leaflets which her organization got out, five were on the subject of Suffrage. A reporter remonstrated with her in regard to Suffrage not being an issue in the West. She agreed with him, but, she added, “We have to combat the Woman’s Party.”

The whole Western campaign of the Republicans was conducted as if they were assured of victory. In many cases the organizers of the Woman’s Party told the Republicans in the East that they were going to lose in certain districts. “Nonsense,” laughed the Republicans, “we are sure to win there, absolutely sure.” Alice Paul in Chicago received reports from campaigners through the West and all predicted Democratic victory. She went to Republican Headquarters with these reports, but she could not convince the Republicans of the truth of them.

Senator Curtis, Secretary of the Republican Senatorial Committee, said he got more information as to the situation in the West from the Woman’s Party than he got from any other source.

It became apparent soon that Wilson was going to win. It was then that advisors came to Alice Paul and said, “Withdraw your speakers from the campaign, so that you will not have the humiliation of defeat before the country.”

And it was then that Alice Paul answered, “No. If we withdraw our speakers from the campaign, we withdraw the issue from the campaign. We must make this such an important thing in national elections that the Democrats will not want to meet it again.”

Commenting on this campaign, Alice Paul said the Democrats made a strong appeal to the women voters but for the Republicans the women did not exist, and in fact the chief recognition that the Republicans made of the women in the West was to send there the Hughes so-called “Golden Special,” which, on leaving Chicago, announced that it was not a “Suffrage Special.”

After the campaign was over, Vance McCormick, Chairman of the Democratic Party, was talking with a member of his committee. He said, in effect: “Before the election of 1918, we must patch up our weak places. Our weakest spot is the Suffrage situation. We must get rid of the Suffrage Amendment before 1918 if we want to control the next Congress.”

* * * * *

The Sixty-fourth Congress met for its second and last session on December 4, 1916. President Wilson delivered a message which made no reference to the subject of Woman Suffrage. The Congressional Union, always having advance information, knew this beforehand. And so on that occasion, by a bit of direct action, they brought Suffrage vividly to the attention of President Wilson, Congress, and the whole country. This was the only action of the Woman’s Party which Alice Paul did not give out beforehand to the press.

Early that morning, before the outer doors were opened, five women of the Congressional Union appeared before the Capitol. After a long wait the doors were opened, and—the first of a big crowd—they placed themselves in the front row of the gallery just to the left of the big clock. They faced the Speaker’s desk, from which the President would read his message. These five women were: Mrs. John Rogers, Jr.; Mrs. Harry Lowenburg; Dr. Caroline Spencer; Florence Bayard Hilles; Mabel Vernon. In a casual manner, other members of the Union seated themselves behind them and on the gallery steps beside them: Lucy Burns; Elizabeth Papandre; Mildred Gilbert; Mrs. William L. Colt; Mrs. Townsend Scott.

Mabel Vernon sat in the middle of the five women in the front row. Pinned to her skirt, under the enveloping cape which she wore, was a big banner of yellow sateen. After the five women had settled themselves, Mabel Vernon unpinned the banner and dropped it, all ready for unrolling, on the floor. At the top of the banner were five long tapes—too long—Mabel Vernon now regretfully declares. At the psychological moment, which had been picked beforehand, in President Wilson’s speech—he was recommending a greater freedom for the Porto Rican men—Mabel Vernon whispered the series of signals which had previously been decided on. Immediately—working like a beautifully co-ordinated machine—the five women stooped, lifted the banner, and, holding it tightly by the tapes, dropped it over the balcony edge. It unrolled with a smart snap and displayed these words:

MR. PRESIDENT, WHAT WILL YOU DO FOR WOMAN SUFFRAGE?

Then the women sat perfectly still, in the words of the Washington Post “five demure and unruffled women ... with the cords supporting the fluttering thing clenched in their hands.”

The effect was instantaneous. The President looked up, hesitated a moment, then went on reading. All the Congressmen turned. The Speaker sat motionless. A buzz ran wildly across the floor. Policemen and guards headed upstairs to the gallery where the women were seated; but their progress was inevitably slow as the steps were tightly packed with members of the Congressional Union. In the meantime, one of the pages, leaping upward, caught the banner and tore it away from the cords in the women’s hands. “If it hadn’t been for those long tapes,” Mabel Vernon says, “they never could have got it until the President finished his speech.”

The episode took up less than five minutes’ time. Until the President finished his message, it seemed to be completely forgotten. But the instant the President with his escort disappeared through the door, every Congressman was on his feet staring up at the gallery.

The Woman’s Party publicity accounts of this episode—multigraphed the night before—were in the hands of the men in the Press Gallery the instant after it happened. This is a sample of the perfect organization and execution of the Woman’s Party plans.

Of course, this incident was a front page story in every newspaper in the United States that night despoiling the President of his headlines. It is now one of the legends in Washington that in the midst of the dinner given to the President by the Gridiron Club shortly after, the identical banner was unfurled before his eyes.

The following week, at the first meeting of the Judiciary Committee since the Presidential Campaign, the report of the Federal Suffrage Amendment was made without recommendation to the House of Representatives.

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VIII

HAIL AND FAREWELL

TO INEZ MILHOLLAND BOISSEVAIN

“For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime; Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.” —MILTON.

Inez, vibrant, courageous, symbolic, How can death claim you? Many he leads down the long halls of silence Burdened with years, Those who have known sorrow And are weary with forgetting, The young who have tasted only gladness And who go with wistful eyes, Never to see the sharp breaking of illusion. For these— We who remain and are lonely Find consolation, saying “They have won the white vistas of quietness.”

But for you— The words of my grief will not form In a pattern of resignation. The syllables of rebellion Are quivering upon my lips! You belonged to life— To the struggling actuality of earth; You were our Hortensia and flung Her challenge to the world— Our world still strangely Roman— “Does justice scorn a woman?”

Oh! Between her words and yours the centuries seem Like little pauses in an ancient song, For in the hour of war’s discordant triumph You both demanded “Peace”! And I, remembering how the faces of many women Turned toward you with passionate expectation, How can I find consolation?

Inez, vibrant, courageous, symbolic, Can death still claim you? When in the whitening winter of our grief Your smile with all the radiance of spring, When from the long halls of silence The memory of your voice comes joyously back To the ears of our desolation— Your voice that held a challenge and a caress. You have gone— Yet you are ours eternally! Your gallant youth, Your glorious self-sacrifice—all ours! Inez, vibrant, courageous, symbolic, Death cannot claim you! RUTH FITCH. The Suffragist, December 30, 1916.

THE most poignant event—and perhaps the most beautiful in all the history of the Congressional Union—took place on Christmas Day of this year, the memorial service in memory of Inez Milholland.

Inez Milholland was one of the human sacrifices offered on the altar of woman’s liberty. She died that other women might be free.

In the recent campaign, she had spoken in Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Utah, Nevada, and California. In her memorial address, Maud Younger said:

The trip was fraught with hardship. Speaking day and night, she would take a train at two in the morning, to arrive at eight; and then a train at midnight, to arrive at five in the morning. She would come away from audiences and droop as a flower. The hours between were hours of exhaustion and suffering. She would ride in the trains gazing from the windows, listless, almost lifeless, until one spoke; then again the sweet smile, the sudden interest, the quick sympathy. The courage of her was marvelous.

At a great mass-meeting at Los Angeles, in October, she was saying—in answer to the President’s words, “The tide is rising to meet the moon; you will not have long to wait,”—“How long must women wait for liberty?” On the word liberty, she fell fainting to the floor. Within a month, she was dead.

That Christmas Day, Statuary Hall in the Capitol of the United States was transformed. The air was full of the smells of the forest. Greens made a background—partially concealing the semi-circle of statues—at the rear; laurel and cedar banked the dais in front; somber velvet curtains fell about its sides. Every one of the chairs which filled the big central space supported a flag of purple, white, and gold. Between the pillars of the balcony hung a continuous frieze; pennants of purple, white, and gold—the tri-color of these feminist crusaders.

The audience assembled in the solemn quiet proper to such an occasion, noiselessly took their seats in the semi-circle below and the gallery above. The organ played Ave Maria. Then again, a solemn silence fell.

Suddenly the stillness was invaded by a sound—music, very faint and far-away. It grew louder and louder. It was the sound of singing. It came nearer and nearer. It was the voices of boys. Presently the beginning of a long line of boy choristers, who had wound through the marble hallway, appeared in the doorway. They marched into the hall chanting:

“Forward, out of error, Leave behind the night, Forward through the darkness, Forward into light.”

Behind came Mary Morgan in white, carrying a golden banner with the above words inscribed on it. This was a duplicate of the banner that Inez Milholland bore in the first Suffrage parade in New York. Behind the golden banner came a great procession of young women wearing straight surplices; the first division in purple, the next in white, the last in gold, carrying high standards which bore the tri-color. Before each division came another young girl in white, carrying a golden banner—lettered.

One banner said:

GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN THAN THIS THAT HELAY DOWN HIS LIFE FOR A FRIEND

Another banner said:

WITHOUT EXTINCTION IS LIBERTY, WITHOUT RETROGRADE IS EQUALITY

The last banner said:

AS HE DIED TO MAKE MEN HOLY LET US DIE TO MAKE MEN FREE

These white-clad girls stood in groups on both sides of the laurel-covered dais against the shadowy background of the curtains. The standard-bearers in the purple, the white, the gold, formed a semi-circle of brilliant color which lined the hall and merged with the purple, white, and gold frieze above them. They stood during the service, their tri-colored banners at rest.

There followed music. The choristers sang: Forward Be Our Watchword. The Mendelssohn Quartet sang: Love Divine and Thou Whose Almighty Word. Elizabeth Howry sang first All Through the Night and, immediately after, Henchel’s ringing triumphant Morning Song. It is an acoustic effect of Statuary Hall that the music seems to come from above. That effect added immeasurably to the solemnity of this occasion.

Tribute speeches followed, Anne Martin introducing the speakers. Mrs. William Kent read two resolutions: one prepared under the direction of Zona Gale, the other by Florence Brewer Boeckel. Maud Younger delivered a beautiful memorial address.

“And so ever through the West, she went,” Miss Younger said in part, “through the West that drew her, the West that loved her, until she came to the end of the West. There where the sun goes down in glory in the vast Pacific, her life went out in glory in the shining cause of freedom.... They will tell of her in the West, tell of the vision of loveliness as she flashed through her last burning mission, flashed through to her death, a falling star in the western heavens.... With new devotion we go forth, inspired by her sacrifice to the end that this sacrifice be not in vain, but that dying she shall bring to pass that which living she could not achieve, full freedom for women, full democracy for the nation....”

At the end the quartet sang, Before the Heavens Were Spread Abroad. Then the procession re-formed, and marched out again as it had come, a slow-moving band of color which gradually disappeared; a river of music which gradually died to a thread, to a sigh ... to nothing.... As before the white-surpliced choristers headed the procession, chanting the recessional, For All the Saints. Their banners lowered, the girl standard-bearers—first those in floating gold, then those in drifting white, then those in heavy purple—followed. From the far-away reaches of the winding marble halls sounded the boyish voices. Faintly came:

O, may Thy Soldiers, faithful, true and bold, Fight as the Saints who nobly fought of old, And win with them the victor’s crown of gold. Alleluia!

And fainter still:

But, lo, there breaks a yet more glorious day, The Saints triumphant rise in bright array.

The voices lost themselves in the distance, merged with silence. The audience still sat moveless, spellbound by all this beauty and grief. Suddenly the Marseillaise burst from the organ like a call to the new battle. Instantly, it was echoed by the strings.

On January 9, the President received a deputation of three hundred women. This deputation brought to him the resolutions passed at memorials held in commemoration of Inez Milholland from California to New York.

Sara Bard Field said in part:

Since that day (a year ago) when we came to you, Mr. President, one of our most beautiful and beloved comrades, Inez Milholland, has paid the price of her life for a cause. The untimely death of a young woman like this—a woman for whom the world has such bitter need—has focussed the attention of men and women of this nation on the fearful waste of women which this fight for the ballot is entailing. The same maternal instinct for the preservation of life—whether it be the physical life of a child, or the spiritual life of a cause—is sending women into this battle for liberty with an urge that gives them no rest night or day. Every advance of liberty has demanded its quota of human sacrifice, and, if I had time, I could show you that we have paid in a measure that is running over. In the light of Inez Milholland’s death, as we look over the long backward trail through which we have sought our political liberty, we are asking, how long, how long, must this struggle go on?

Mr. President, to the nation more than to women themselves is this waste of maternal force significant. In industry, such a waste of money and strength would not be permitted. The modern trend is all towards efficiency. Why is such waste permitted in the making of a nation?

Sometimes I think it must be very hard to be a President, in respect to his contacts with people, as well as in the grave business he must perform. The exclusiveness necessary to a great dignitary holds him away from the democracy of communion necessary to full understanding of what the people are really thinking and desiring. I feel that this deputation today fails in its mission if, because of the dignity of your office and the formality of such an occasion, we fail to bring to you the throb of woman’s desire for freedom and her eagerness to ally herself with all those activities to which you yourself have dedicated your life. When once the ballot is in her hand, those tasks which this nation has set itself to do are her tasks as well as man’s. We women who are here today are close to this desire of woman. We cannot believe that you are our enemy, or are indifferent to the fundamental righteousness of our demand.

We have come here to you in your powerful office as our helper. We have come in the name of justice, in the name of democracy, in the name of all women who have fought and died for this cause, and in a peculiar way, with our hearts bowed in sorrow, in the name of this gallant girl who died with the word “Liberty” on her lips. We have come asking you this day to speak some favorable word to us, that we may know that you will use your good and great office to end this wasteful struggle of women.

Ladies, I had not been apprised that you were coming here to make any representation that would issue an appeal to me. I had been told that you were coming to present memorial resolutions with regard to the very remarkable woman whom your cause has lost. I therefore am not prepared to say anything further than I have said on previous occasions of this sort.

I do not need to tell you where my own convictions and my own personal purpose lie, and I need not tell you by what circumscriptions I am bound as leader of a Party. As the leader of a Party, my commands come from that Party, and not from private personal convictions.

My personal action as a citizen, of course, comes from no source, but my own conviction, and there my position has been so frequently defined, and I hope so candidly defined, and it is so impossible for me until the orders of my Party are changed, to do anything other than I am doing as a Party leader that I think nothing more is necessary to be said.

I do want to say this: I do not see how anybody can fail to observe from the utterance of the last campaign that the Democratic Party is more inclined than the opposition Party to assist in this great cause, and it has been a matter of surprise to me, and a matter of very great regret, that so many of those who are heart and soul for this cause seem so greatly to misunderstand and misinterpret the attitudes of Parties. In this country, as in every other self-governing country, it is really through the instrumentality of Parties that things can be accomplished. They are not accomplished by the individual voice, but by concentrated action, and that action must come only so fast as you can concert it. I have done my best, and shall continue to do my best to concert it in the interest of a cause in which I personally believe.

In Maud Younger’s delightful Revelations of a Woman Lobbyist, in McCall’s Magazine, she thus describes that scene:

The doors opened, and, surrounded by Secret Service men, President Wilson entered. He came quickly forward, smiling as he shook my hand. Contrary to the general impression, President Wilson has a very human, sympathetic personality. He is not the aloof, academic type one expects of a man who, avoiding people, gets much of his knowledge from books and reports. Though he appears to the general public as in a mist on a mountain top, like the gods of old, he is really a man of decided emotional reactions.

I answered his greeting briefly, giving him the resolutions I held, and presented Mrs. John Winters Brannan, who handed him the New York memorial without speaking at all. We were saving time for his declaration. Then came Sara—small, delicate Sara Bard Field, a woman of rare spirituality and humor—whom we had chosen to speak for us.

She began to talk very nobly and beautifully, while the President listened cordially. But suddenly a cold wave passed over him. Sara had quoted Mr. Hughes. At that name, the President’s manner chilled. The look in his eyes became so cold that, as Sara says, the words almost froze on her lips. She finished in an icy stillness, and after a moment the President spoke.

Instead of the assurances we had expected, we heard words to the effect that he could not dictate to his Party. We must first concert public opinion. It was his last gleam, for, looking about him and seeing amazement, disappointment, indignation, he grew still colder. With a last defiant glance at us all he abruptly left the room. Secret Service men, newspaper men, and secretaries followed him. Where the President of the United States had been was now a closed door.

Stunned, talking in low, indignant tones, we moved slowly out of the East Room and returned to our Headquarters. There we discussed the situation. We saw that the President would do nothing for some time, perhaps not until the eve of the Presidential election in 1920. He said we must concert public opinion. But how? For half a century women had been walking the hard way of the lobbyist. We had had speeches, meetings, parades, campaigns, organization. What new method could we devise?

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