While the Suffragists were still in the old Workhouse, Alice Paul, following her usual system of complete publicity, had announced another protest meeting at the Lafayette Monument.
Later Alice Paul received a letter from Colonel Ridley:
I have been advised that you desire to hold a demonstration in Lafayette Square on Thursday, August 22. By direction of the Chief of Engineers, U. S. Army, you are hereby granted permission to hold this demonstration. You are advised good order must prevail.
Miss Paul replied:
We received yesterday your permit for a Suffrage demonstration in Lafayette Park this afternoon, and are very glad that our meetings are no longer to be interfered with. Because of the illness of so many of our members, due to their treatment in prison this last week, and with the necessity of caring for them at Headquarters, we are planning to hold our next meeting a little later. We have not determined on the exact date but we will inform you of the time as soon as it is decided upon.
As a result of the first series of protest meetings, the Administration had yielded to the point of no longer interfering with the meetings at the Lafayette Monument. But as time went by and neither the Senate nor the President did anything about Suffrage, the National Woman’s Party announced that a protest meeting would be held at the Lafayette Monument on September 16 at four o’clock. Immediately the President announced that he would receive a delegation of Southern and Western Democratic women that day at two.
The same day, September 16, as Maud Younger was coming back from the Capitol to Headquarters, Senator Overman of the Rules Committee came and sat by her in the car. In the course of his conversation, he remarked casually: “I don’t think your bill is coming up this session.”
That afternoon, Abby Scott Baker went to see Senator Jones of New Mexico, Chairman of the Suffrage Committee, to ask him to call a meeting of the Committee to bring Suffrage to the vote. Senator Jones refused. He said he would not bring up the Suffrage Amendment at this session in Congress.
When—still later—that delegation of Southern and Western Democratic women called on the President, he said to them: