The Story of the Woman's Party

by Inez Haynes Gillmore

Like 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 might 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 the 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.”

When 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.