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 19dress 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:
20“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 21weeks 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.
22“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 23to 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 24say 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!”
25like 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 26might 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 27the 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.”
28when 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 man?uver 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 29for 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.
30on 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.”
