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.