… time and again, lobbyists would come back from the Capitol with the news of some unexpected maneuver which perplexed or even blocked them. Congressmen, themselves, would be puzzled over the situation. Again and again, she has seen Alice Paul walk to the window, stand there, head bent, thinking. Then, suddenly she would come back. She had seen behind the veil of conflicting and seemingly untranslatable testimony. She had, in Maud Younger's own words, cloven "straight to the heart of things." Often her lobbyists hail the experience of explaining to baffled members of Committees in Congress the concealed tactics of their own Committee.
Maud Younger
The Story of the Woman’s Party, Inez Haynes Gillmore
Google Miss Alice Paul today and you will find 164 million results. It is a very high number for a woman whom most only know as Hilary Swank, wearing a pink hat, enjoying prison and evaporating August 27, 1920. If you scan the first hundred references there is one description always in the lead; strategist. Lucy Burns was comfortable in public, loved parades and pageantry but it was Alice Paul whose mind never, ever rested.
As recently and notably, George Lakey in 2013 and Marty Langelan in 2014, Hazel Hunkins-Hallinan to Peg Edwards describing Alice’s mind at 91 (1976), all agreed. “I interviewed Alice Paul many years later and found in her the shrewd strategist who knows that polarization can close doors in the short run and open them for the longer run — it’s all in the timing” writes George Lakey.1
Where did this plotting mind come from? Was it the organized mind of a banker’s daughter or from sitting in silence at the Meeting House. Did she naturally organize all matters because of her study of biology and economics or was she so genuinely focused that all distractions were instantly discarded? She is often quoted as saying nothing else mattered before constitutional equality – nothing. It was a maddening insistence to some and a great relief to others. It was never simple and always calculated. Grandmaster Irina Krush would have no chance with Miss Paul. Not only was her strategy the long game but she never tipped her next move.
Alice simply knew the cause, the effect and the differential. All masterfully played. The worse things got, the more women showed up for her. And make no mistake, it was for her. As Miss Hazel Hunkins-Hallinan remarked, when you looked into her violet eyes, you could not say no. Followers trusted her for one reason – she knew the next move. She always knew the next move. In fact, sometimes she was on to the next move while everyone else was still finishing off the last. Her earned discipline, her own self-mastery was her core.
Looking up Pennsylvania Avenue, most see a domed building. Miss Paul saw the collective ground game for legislative success. She dissected and indexed the capitol. It became her chessboard. The goal was to invade and convert lawmakers to finally enfranchise women. Alice trained and unleashed her fashionable, ladylike crusaders in full force. The 64th Congress would be occupied by ladies heels constantly clicking on the white marble floors. The more the men resisted, the more ladies showed up. The private men’s smoker became compromised. From the gallery to the offices, there was a constant parade of hats under which ticked an unwelcome insistence for a voice, a vote, an office, full equality.
Who were these ladies? Their economic and educational diversity was pivotal to making the viewer pay attention. These were wives of the powerful men of Washington, socialites with furs, PhD’s and artists. These were students, waitresses, secretaries and housekeepers. These were daughters and grandmothers who were swept up in the thrill of stepping out. With assignments distributed, notes in hand, they took to persuade, convert and conquer the Senators and Representatives of the United States Congress. The “ladies” were activated.
Spent the entire day, rode elevators, walked the white marble halls even “discovered secret stairways.” One congressman said, "Women don't know anything about politics. Did you ever hear them talking together ? Well, first they talk about fashions, and children, and housework; and then, perhaps about churches; and then perhaps — about theatres; and then perhaps " he finally added, " Do you think I want my wife working against my interests ?
Revelations of a Woman Lobbyist, Maud Younger
Ali
ce had seen the differential at work in London. Militants had the hearts of warriors, the tactics of soldiers but the fashion sense of Selfridges. They carried chalk in their handbags for public announcements and one, Mary Richardson, toted a small axe she used to slash the painting Venus at the London National Gallery. Alice herself knew the power of appearance. It stood in direct contrast to the violence of being attacked, banners ripped or being dragged down the street. She was a Quaker, a very reserved lady and the epitome of a tempest in a teapot.
In those days, Alice Paul herself was like one driven by a fury of speed. She was a human dynamo. She made everybody else work as hard as possible, but she drove — although she did drive — nobody so hard as herself. Winifred Mallon said, "I worked with Alice Paul for three months before I saw her with her hat off. I was perfectly astonished, I remember, at that mass of hair. I had never suspected its existence."
The Story of the Woman’s Party by Inez Haynes Gillmore
The women of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and her Congressional Committee dressed to attract, not repel. They were dressed as women of means and etiquette with their plans on index cards in their pocketbooks, held by gloved hands. They were respectable ladies, many of whom were married to the very legislators they were agitating. Widely brimmed, held by hatpins, Edwardian hats were uniform. These ladies were not the ones mocked in anti-suffrage cartoons wearing the pants in the family. They were shapely, refined and articulate on politics.
Many of these ladies had not lobbied before. Possibly they had not envisioned themselves walking up the hill to tangle with Congress at all. These were not the seasoned lobbyists representing labor and protection rights. To start the orientation, Alice Paul sent them sit in the gallery and watch the democratic process at work. Lucy Burns headed up the Congressional Union army of lobbyists who would insist that the US Constitution be amended to include women voters. Each was assigned a member of Congress. They read reports, took notes, followed legislation and knocked on every office door. They distributed questionnaires, flyers and filed all their findings back at the CU office. As one member of Congress remarked, the CU had turned the halls of Congress in to a “Millinery Establishment.”
Their assigned target was based on similarities; clubs, family members, religion; dozens of things ~ all detailed in the Congressional Voting Card index (CVC). Thousands of handwritten 5 X 8 index cards were organized and constantly updated on every member of Congress. Managed by Ann Martin in 1915 and carried on by Maud Younger in 1916, this extraordinary, detailed analog database was an unparalleled weapon for change. An astounding twenty-two senators were converted through the use of the CVC. “One Congressman on whom we started a campaign received so many letters and telegrams that he said:' If you will only stop I will vote for the amendment. It keeps my office force busy all day answering letters about Suffrage alone,'' recalls Maud Younger.
Oracle could boast of such a “relational database.”
- Name and brief biography
- Ancestry, Nativity, Education, Religion, Offices Held, General Information
- Birth, Date, Place, Number of Children, Additional Information
- Father Nativity, Education, Occupation
- Mother Nativity, Education, Occupation
- Brothers. Nativity, Education, Occupation
- Education: Preparatory School and College
- Religion: Name of Church, Date of Entrance, Position Held in Church, Church Work
- Military Service: Dates, Offices, Battles, Additional Information
- Occupation: Past, Present
- Labor Record
- Literary Work
- Lecture Work
- Newspapers what newspapers member reads and have the most influence over him
- Recreation
- Hobbies
- Health
- Habits
- Political Life Prior to Congress: Offices Held. Whether Supported Prohibition Amendment, Offices Run For
- Political life in Congress: Terms, Date, Party, Bills Introduced, Bills Supported, Committees
- Suffrage Record: Outside of Congress, In Congress
- Votes cast in Election of Member
In addition to these data fields, there were dates of the interview, the name of the interviewer and personal notations by the lobbyists. They also tracked all signatures, letters and sent holiday cards, including birthdays.2
It is important to know all about the mother, and that explains why a whole card is devoted to her. Mothers continue to have strong influence over their sons. Some married men listen to their mother more than to their wives. You will hear a man telling his wife how his mother used to do it, and then we know from his frequent reference to his mother that if we can make of her a strong advocate for suffrage we have the best of chances of winning the son, or if it is the wife who has the strong influence and she is an anti. We know that our first work must be to convert the wife to our cause.
New York Times, March 2, 1919.
In true Alice Paul style; frugal and forthright, she publicly presented a full report on the “Cost of Suffrage.”
Regarding the CVC;
The National Woman’s Party has a card index which contains a record of each individual Senator and Representative. This index and the maintenance of the “legislative department of the party” cost $12,639.37 involving, as it did, a large corps of lobbyists to interview members of the Senate and House not only once but repeatedly. This involved considerable traveling and a large office for cataloging the cards. The results of the interviews of the militant organizers with the politicians and every obtainable printed report indicating the suffrage views, were cataloged in these files for use in the fight to compel the passage of the resolution, which submitted the suffrage amendment to the state legislatures for ratification.
(Total cost to the NWP for the ratification of the 19th Amendment, $664,208.42)
New York Times, November 29, 1920.
The legacy of hats waxed and waned, as does the American Women’s Movement. They surfaced again in the House terms of Representative Bella Abzug, (D. NY).
Ms. Abzug traced the wearing of her trademark wide-brimmed hats. She recalled: ''When I was a young lawyer, I would go to people's offices and they would always say: ‘Sit here. We'll wait for the lawyer.' Working women wore hats. It was the only way they would take you seriously. After a while, I started liking them. When I got to Congress, they made a big thing of it. So I was watching. Did they want me to wear it or not? They didn't want me to wear it, so I did.”
New York Times, April 1, 1998.
So renown, today there is even a Facebook page dedicated to Bella Abzug’s hats.3
In October 21, 2014 the Veteran Feminists of America presented Gloria Steinem with one of Rep. Abzug’s hats at a gala luncheon at the New York Harvard Club.4
No mistaking the brilliant commanding strategist of the militant branch of the American Suffrage Movement was quiet, brave, percolating Alice Paul. It sounds so simple but the depth of her understanding cannot be overstated. She, herself, navigating the differential moved from a childhood home of equality and ease to carrying the banner of women worldwide to end second class citizenship, any classism in regards to citizenship in fact. She never stopped, be it while serving in an organization or utterly alone.
It is almost as if Alice hovered miles above to have this long vision; the procession, the halls of Congress, the Sentinels at the fence, the vote, were all calculated moves on the road to full constitutional equality. It was never for her mother, daughters (she never had), her friends, herself. It was for the constitution itself, as without equality, it was flawed beyond application. Without equality, no one was a full citizen. She never took her hat off as the job was and is not done.
1. Should We Bother Trying to Change our Opponents’ Hearts? George Lakey. Waging Nonviolence June 4, 2013
2. Sewall-Belmont House & Museum CVC
3. Fans of Bella Abzugs Hats
4. Veteran Feminists of America
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