The Story of the Woman's PartyGillmore, Inez Haynes
History
The Story of the Woman's Party
Gillmore, Inez Haynes
National Woman's Party; Paul, Alice, 1885-1977; Women -- Suffrage -- United States
I asked a member of the Woman’s Party who had watched the work from the
beginning what was the difference between the two women. She answered,
“They are both political-minded. They seemed in those early days to have
one spirit and one brain. Both saw the situation exactly as it was, but
they went at the problem with different methods. Alice Paul had a more
acute sense of justice, Lucy Burns, a more bitter sense of injustice.
Lucy Burns would become angry because the President or the people did
not do this or that. Alice Paul never expected anything of them.”
Both these women had the highest kind of courage. Lucy Burns—although
she admits that at Occoquan Workhouse, she suffered from nameless
terrors—has a mental poise that is almost unsusceptible to fear. Alice
Paul—although she can with perfect composure endure arrest,
imprisonment, hunger-striking—acknowledges timidities. She does not like
to listen to horrors of any description, especially ghost-stories. They
say though that, in the movies, she always particularly enjoyed pirates.
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IV
F STREET AND THE EARLY DAYS
WHEN Alice Paul arrived in Washington in December, 1912, she found a
discouraging state of things. She had been given the address of
Headquarters, but Headquarters had vanished. She had been given a list
of people to whom she could turn for help, but most of them had died or
moved away. At that time, Mrs. William Kent, who was subsequently to
become one of her constant and able assistants, was Chairman of the
Congressional Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage
Association. Two years before, when her husband was elected to Congress,
Mrs. Kent came to Washington. When she was asked to become Chairman of
this Committee she was told that it would entail no work. She must
merely see that the bill was introduced and arrange hearings before the
two committees. There was no thought of putting the Amendment through,
and no lobbying for it. The National Association allowed Mrs. Kent ten
dollars. At the end of the year she returned change. There were a few
Suffrage clubs in Washington, but their activity was merely social.
Alice Paul saw that the work had to be started from the very beginning.
First of all they had to have Headquarters. She hired a little basement
room at 1420 F Street. At a formal opening on January 2, 1913, Mrs.
William Kent, presiding, introduced Alice Paul as her successor; and a
plan for federal work was laid before the Suffragists of the District of
Columbia. Of course no one at the meeting guessed that she was present
at a historic occasion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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