She was young and pretty. She established herself there and began to enjoy herself. She was a Suffragist. One day, out of a clear sky, Alice Paul said: “Miss Ross, will you go to Wyoming on Saturday, and organize a State Convention there within three weeks?” “Why, Miss Paul,” the girl faltered, “I can’t. My plans are all made for the winter. I’ve only just got here.” Nevertheless, in a few days, Miss Ross started for Wyoming. There were only eight members of the Congressional Union in that State, and yet three weeks later she had achieved a State Convention with one hundred and twenty delegates.
Perhaps, however, the story which best illustrates Miss Paul’s power to make people work is one of Nina Allender’s. One must remember that Mrs. Allender is an artist. One day Alice Paul telephoned her to ask her if she would go the next day to Ohio to campaign for the Woman’s Party. Mrs. Allender, who had no more expectation of going to Ohio than to the moon, replied: “I’m sorry. It’s impossible. You see, we have just moved. The place is being papered and painted, and I’ve got to select the wallpaper.” “Oh, that’s all right,” Alice Paul suggested. “I’ll send a girl right up there. She’ll pick your paper for you and see that it’s put on.” In the end, of course, Mrs. Allender chose her own paper. But although she did not go to Ohio the next day, she went within a week.
When Alice Paul asked Maud Younger to deliver the memorial address on Inez Milholland, Miss Younger was at first staggered by the idea. “I can’t,” she said. “I don’t know how to do it.”
“Oh,” directed Alice Paul in a dégagé way, “just write something like Lincoln’s Gettysburg address.”
The first Headquarters consisted of one long basement room, partitioned at the back into three small rooms of which two were storerooms, and one Miss Paul’s office. This opened into a court. Later when the Suffragist was published, they had rooms upstairs; sometimes one, sometimes more, according to their funds. By the first anniversary, they had expanded to ten rooms. Later still, they had two whole floors.
Almost all the work was done by volunteers. All kinds of people worked for them. Comparatively idle women of the moneyed class gave up matinées, teas, and other social occasions; stenographers, who worked all day long, labored until midnight. Anybody who dropped into Headquarters for any purpose was put to work. Once a distinguished lawyer from a western city called on business with Alice Paul.
“Would you mind addressing a few envelopes?” asked Alice Paul when the business was concluded. The distinguished lawyer, whose own office was of course manned by a small army of stenographers, smiled; but he took off his coat and went to work.
Alice Paul’s swift, decisive leadership was accepted, unquestioningly. Her word was immutable. One day an elderly woman was observed at a typewriter, painfully picking at it with a stiff forefinger. It was obvious that with a great expenditure of time and energy, she was accomplishing nothing.
“Why are you doing that?” somebody asked curiously.
“Because Alice Paul told me to,” was the plaintive answer.