The National Executive Committee of the Democratic party, after a referendum vote of the members of the National Committeemen, passed a resolution calling for favorable action in the Senate. Mr. A. Mitchell Palmer wrote to the Woman’s Party saying that this resolution must be regarded as “an official expression of the Democratic Party through the only organization which can speak for it between national conventions.”
The Republican National Committee meeting at the same time commended the course taken by Republican Representatives who had voted for the amendment in the House, and declared their position to be “a true interpretation of the thought of the Republican Party.”
Republican and Democratic state, county and city committees followed the lead and called for Senate action.
State legislatures in rapid succession called upon the Senate to pass the measure, that they in turn might immediately ratify. North Dakota, New York, Rhode Island, Arizona, Texas and other states acted in this matter.
Intermittent attempts on the Republican side to force action, followed by eloquent speeches from time to time, piquing their opponents, left the Democrats bison-like across the path. The majority of them were content to rest upon the action taken in the House.
I was at this time Chairman of the Political Department of the Woman’s Party, and in that capacity interviewed practically every national leader in both majority parties. I can not resist recording a few impressions.
Colonel William Boyce Thompson of New York, now Chairman of Ways and Means of the Republican National Committee, who with Raymond Robins had served in Russia as member of the United States Red Cross. Mission, had just returned. The deadlock was brought to his attention. He immediately responded in a most effective way. In a brief but dramatic speech at a great mass meeting of the Woman’s Party, at Palm Beach, Florida, he said:
“The story of the brutal imprisonment in Washington of women advocating suffrage is shocking and almost incredible. I became accustomed in Russia to the stories of men and women who served terms of imprisonment under the Czar, because of their love of liberty, but did not know that women in my own country had been subjected to brutal treatment long since abandoned in Russia.
“I wish now to contribute ten thousand dollars to the campaign for the passage of the suffrage amendment through the Senate,, one hundred dollars for each of the pickets who went to prison because she stood at the gates of the White House, asking for the passage of the suffrage measure.”
This was the largest single contribution received during the national agitation. Colonel Thompson had been a suffragist all his life, but he now became actively identified with the work for the national amendment. Since then he has continued to give generously of his money and to lend his political prestige as often as necessary.