On August 10, 11, and 12, of 1916, the newly-formed National Woman’s Party held a conference at the Hotel Antlers in Colorado Springs, to formulate a policy for the coming presidential campaign.

In Washington, Senators and Representatives read avidly the newspaper accounts of this convention.

Politically, it was a tremendously impressive gathering. Prominent women came from all the Western States to decide how they should endeavor to mobilize the women’s votes. Greatly alarmed at this drifting away of members, the Democratic Party sent prominent Democratic women to plead with them not to leave the Party and to represent to them that Peace was more important than Suffrage. The Republicans sent important Republican women to plead with them to give their support to Hughes since he had come out for the Federal Suffrage Amendment.

Finally the Democratic leaders appealed to the President to counteract the attacks being made on the Party, on the score of its Suffrage record. The President, thereupon, despatched to the Thomas Jefferson Club of Denver the following letter which was read at a banquet the last day of the Conference.

The White House,

Washington, D. C., August 7, 1916.

My dear Friends:

I wish I could meet you face to face and tell you in person how deeply I appreciate the work your organization has done and proposes to do for the cause of democracy and popular government.

I am told that yours was the first woman’s Democratic voters’ organization in America, and I am sure that as such it must have 173been the instrument of impressing your convictions very deeply upon the politics of your State.

One of the strongest forces behind the Equal Suffrage sentiment of the country is the now demonstrated fact that in the Suffrage States women interest themselves in public questions, study them thoroughly, form their opinions and divide as men do concerning them. It must in frankness be admitted that there are two sides to almost every important public question, and even the best informed persons are bound to differ in judgment concerning it. With each difference in judgment, it is not only natural, but right and patriotic, that the success of opposing convictions should be sought through political alignment and the measuring of their strength at the polls through political agencies. Men do this naturally, and so do women; though it has required your practical demonstration of it to convince those who doubted this. In proportion as the political development of women continues along this line, the cause of Equal Suffrage will be promoted.

Those who believe in Equal Suffrage are divided into those who believe that each State should determine for itself when and in what direction the Suffrage should be extended, and those who believe that it should be immediately extended by the action of the national government, by means of an amendment to the Federal Constitution. Both the great political Parties of the nation have in their recent platforms favored the extension of Suffrage to women through State action, and I do not see how their candidates can consistently disregard these official declarations. I shall endeavor to make the declaration of my own Party in this matter effectual by every influence that I can properly and legitimately exercise.

Woman’s part in the progress of the race, it goes without saying, is quite as important as man’s. The old notion, too, that Suffrage and service go hand in hand, is a sound one, and women may well appeal to it, though it has long been invoked against them. The war in Europe has forever set at rest the notion that nations depend in time of stress wholly upon their men. The women of Europe are bearing their full share of war’s awful burden in the daily activities of the struggle, and more than their share as sufferers. Their fathers and husbands and sons are fighting and dying in the trenches; but they have taken up the work on the farms, at the mill, and in the workshop and counting houses. They bury the dead, care for the sick and wounded, console the fatherless, and sustain the constant shock of war’s appalling sacrifices.

174From these hideous calamities we in this favored land of ours have thus far been shielded. I shall be profoundly thankful, if, consistently with the honor and integrity of the nation, we may maintain to the end our peaceful relations with the world.

Cordially and sincerely yours,

Woodrow Wilson.

To the officers and members of the Jane Jefferson Club of Colorado.

The Woman’s Party did not care for whom the women cast their protest vote—Republicans, Socialists, Prohibitionists—they cared only that women should not vote for the Democrats. They knew if this protest vote was large enough, whoever was elected would realize that opposition to Suffrage was inexpedient.

At Colorado Springs the National Woman’s Party passed the following resolutions:

Resolved that the National Woman’s Party, so long as the opposition of the Democratic Party continues, pledges itself to use its best efforts in the twelve States where women vote for President to defeat the Democratic candidate for President; and in the eleven States where women vote for members of Congress to defeat the candidates of the Democratic Party for Congress.

Immediately the campaign began. It was the biggest campaign—the most important ever waged by the Woman’s Party. A stream of organizers started for the Western States to prepare the way for the speakers. How hard, and how long, and how intensively these girl organizers worked will never be known because, in the very nature of things, there could be no adequate record of their efforts. Then came a stream of speakers, relay after relay—convinced, informed, experienced—and inspired. Among them were Harriot Stanton Blatch, Sara Bard Field, Ida Finney Mackrille, Mrs. William Kent, Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, Helen Todd, Maud Younger, Rose Winslow, and Gail Laughlin. The brilliant, beautiful Inez Milholland Boissevain, doomed soon to die so untimely but so glorious a death, was appointed special flying envoy to make a twelve mile swing through 175the twelve western Equal Suffrage States; to bring to the enfranchised women of the West an appeal for help from the disfranchised women of the East.

The campaign of 1916 was characterized by the swiftness of attack and efficiency of method which characterized the campaign of 1914, but it was carried out on a much larger scale. In Washington, Headquarters boiled ... bubbled ... seethed....

From Washington there sifted into the West tons of campaign literature: miles of purple, white, and gold banners; acres of great across-the-street streamers. In the West itself, Woman’s Party speakers addressed every kind of meeting known to our civilization: indoor meetings; outdoor meetings; luncheons; banquets; labor unions; business men’s organizations; in churches, factories, theatres; at mining camps, county fairs. They took advantage of impromptu meetings in the streets; small ready-made meetings at clubs; large advertised mass-meetings. And Inez Milholland’s activities as a flying envoy—and in that, her last flight she did fly—were the climax of it all.

The slogan of the Wilson party was, “He kept us out of war.” The slogan of the Woman’s Party developed, “He kept us out of Suffrage.”

The Democrats, remembering the results of the campaign of 1914, were far from indulgent of this small army, the members of which were all generals.

In Denver, Elsie Hill the Woman’s Party organizer was arrested and hurried to the police station in a patrol wagon. The only charge against her was that she had distributed literature telling the Democratic record on Suffrage.

In Colorado Springs, the Federal Amendment banner was “arrested” and locked up for the night in jail.

In Chicago, described by the Chicago Tribune as the “pivotal point of the 1916 election,” this hostility was much more violent. The day that Wilson spoke there a hundred women, some of them carrying inscribed banners, stationed themselves at the entrance to the auditorium where he was 176to appear. They were attacked by groups of men, who tore their banners out of their hands, and demolished them. Several women were thrown to the ground, and one, still clinging to the banner, was dragged across the street.

This was followed by an attack upon Minnie E. Brooke, one of the Woman’s Party speakers. She was alone, walking quietly down Michigan Boulevard. She had a small purple, white, and gold flag in her hand, and was wearing the regalia of the Woman’s Party. Suddenly two men darted up to her, and tried to tear her colors away. In the struggle she was thrown down and would have fallen in front of an automobile had not a hotel employee run to her assistance.

However, in the out-of-way country places in the Western States, the Woman’s Party speakers were received with that hearty hospitality, that instant and instinctive chivalry, which marks the West. In this campaign, they made a point of appearing in the State and County Fairs which characterized the late summer and early fall months.

On Frontier Day, at the Douglas County Grange at Castle Rock, Colorado, Elsie Hill spoke—to a grandstand crowded with people—between the end of the relay race (in which the riders changed horses and saddles) and the beginning of the steer-roping contest. On the stand were massed men, women, and children. Just over the fence crowded hundreds of cowboys and farmers.

Street processions also characterized this campaign. At night in Salt Lake City occurred an extraordinary parade—a river of yellow. The squad of mounted policemen who headed the procession wore the purple, white, and gold regalia of the Woman’s Party. Marching women carried lighted yellow Japanese lanterns. The people who filled the automobiles carried yellow lanterns. The huge Amendment banner was yellow. Yellow banners were strung across the streets.

Billboards and posters appeared everywhere which adjured voters not to support Wilson or any Democratic candidates 177for Congress. In Tucson and Prescott, Arizona, these great banners were surreptitiously cut down. In California, the Democrats placed counter placards beside these disturbing posters. In San Francisco, armed patrols guarded the two conflicting posters in one hotel lobby.

The Woman’s Party speakers took advantage of all kinds of situations. In one town, Maud Younger found that a circus had arrived just ahead of her. There was no adequate hall for a meeting; and so the circus men offered her their tent; they even megaphoned her meeting for her. In another town, a County Fair was being held. Maud Younger appealed to the clowns to give her a chance to speak, and they let her have their platform and the spot-light while they were changing costumes. In San Francisco, Hazel Hunkins scattered thousands of leaflets from an aeroplane flying over the city. Red Lodge, Montana, sent to the train, which brought Abby Scott Baker to them, a delegation of members of the Grand Army of the Republic, t............