At Chattanooga, Joy Young had explained the situation; The Mayor was with them; the Bar Association, the Chief of Police, the Sheriff were against them; so the Mayor with the assistance of Labor and the newspapers took up their fight. No hall was to be had, _and someone in the Bar Association instructed the Chief of Police to enter any private house and break up any meeting the Suffragists might hold; and the Sheriff to do the same in the country outside the city limits_. But Labor was not to be outwitted. They were holding a scheduled meeting in their own hall that night. Labor canceled that meeting and offered Maud Younger the hall free. They said they would like to see any police break up a meeting in _their_ hall. All day long there was a stormy session of the Commissioners as to whether or not she might speak. But in the end she did speak. * * * * * Later, when Maud Younger returned to Washington, she met Senator McKellar in the course of her lobbying activities. Of course, she was astute enough to know that orders for all this persecution had come from above. She referred quite frankly to his efforts to stop her in Tennessee. With equal frankness, Senator McKellar said: “I wasn’t going to have you talking against the President in Tennessee.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ III MORE PRESSURE ON CONGRESS THE various activities described in the last six chapters all took place in the year 1917. But during all this year—when the picketing, the arrests, the imprisonments, were going on—work with Congress was of course proceeding parallel with it. It now becomes necessary to go back to the very beginning of the year to follow that work. It will be remembered that early in this year there occurred in Washington an event of national political importance. The Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage and the Woman’s Party merged into one organization. This union of the Congressional Union with the Woman’s Party occurred on March 2. On March 3—the last day of his first Administration—President Wilson despatched the following letter to the Hon. W. R. Crabtree, a member of the Tennessee Legislature. May I not express my earnest hope that the Senate of Tennessee will reconsider the vote by which it rejected the legislation extending the Suffrage to women? Our Party is so distinctly pledged to its passage that it seems to me the moral obligation is complete. WOODROW WILSON. On April 26 occurred a hearing before the Senate Committee; Anne Martin presided. The note she struck in her opening speech sounded all through the hearing—the somber, sinister note of the Great War; and the necessity of accepting the Suffrage Amendment as a war measure.