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 to 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 say 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!”