The day after leaving the District Board for the City of New York I called at the employment department of the Y. W. The head of the department greeted me cordially. She had plenty of jobs—up-town, down-town, in all the suburbs. Reading her card catalogue of openings she stated that the Suffrage Party was offering ten dollars a week for canvassers, to work from five to nine evenings.

“Could you place me where I would not be recognized?” I inquired.

“Know many persons on the upper West Side?” she asked. I shook my head. “Ever see Miss Madeline Marks?” Again I shook my head. “She’s in charge at the West 78th Street branch. She’s been begging for help. I’ll give you a card——”

The telephone at her elbow rang vigorously. She took off the receiver and applied it to her ear, all the while filling in a card introducing me to Miss Madeline Marks.

“Daskam & Howe? Yes, I remember. You want addressers? Piece-work? One and a quarter a thousand? No, I can’t send you any one at that.” The secretary’s tone was final. “One fifty is the least they are taking. Most demand two. Are they getting it?” A satisfied chuckle. “I’ve listed about four vacancies to every one I’ve been able to fill. Of course if any one comes in—What’s that?—one dollar seventy-five?”

“I’ll take it,” I whispered. “Tell them you’ll be able to send one.”

“I may be able to send you one or two at one seventy-five,” she called over the wire. “Of course I’ll do the best I can for you. Good-by.” As she hung up the receiver she turned to me. “I was in hopes you’d be willing to help the Suffrage Party out,” she told me, and it was plainly evident that she was disappointed. “This is the last week before the election, and——”

“I’m going to take both positions,” I hastened to interrupt. “My first job was with Daskam & Howe—mail-order house. The manager of the addressers is a nice little man; he’ll let me get off afternoons in time to canvass for suffrage.”

She cut her eyes at me and smiled.

“Any of them will do that now,” she assured me. “They’ll let you do about anything you want, they are so put to it to get workers. I’m glad you’re going to work for suffrage. Do you think there’s any chance of our winning?”

“If I work for it—yes.”

She turned on me and looked me up and down.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“There’s a sort of superstition at home—however hopeless a cause may appear, if I get busy and work for it it wins.”

“You believe it?”

“Why not?” I parried. “We all thought President Wilson’s chance for re-election was hopeless. At the eleventh hour I had myself made vice-president of a Woodrow Wilson League and got busy.”

“That was a close shave!” she breathed.

“My work saved him,” I laughed.

“For heaven’s sake!” she exclaimed, pressing two cards of introduction into my hand. “Get busy and work for suffrage.”

Within half an hour I presented myself at the employees’ entrance of Daskam & Howe. Instead of the kindly little manager a young woman with a face like an Indian tomahawk received me. Being among the late-comers, I was seated in the room in which the buyers of the firm had their desks. All these buyers, including corsets and women’s underwear, were men. At least that was the condition the day that I began work. A day or so later a woman, the only woman employed by the firm as a buyer, returned from her vacation.

“Hello, fellers!” she called, stopping in the door on her return. “Damn busy, I see, chewing the rag. You’re a hell of a lot.” And after this a long string of oaths.

In the use of swear words I had imagined the men buyers unsurpassed. They couldn’t touch that girl. It did not seem possible for her to open her mouth without letting out a string of oaths. She swore at her fellow buyers, at the men and women who came bringing samples from manufacturers. She swore at members of the firm, at me, and all the other addressers, but most of all she swore at the telephone.

Strange to say, the men buyers were shocked. So long as she was in the room they acted like a handful of mice in the presence of a cat. Puzzled by this I asked the girl with the tomahawk face for an explanation.

“Who, Miss Sojowski?” she replied. “She’s got these men beat to a finish. That’s what’s the matter. She’s buyer for women and girls’ suits, hats, and coats—four jobs in one. She’s been with the firm five years, and she’s never made a mistake—all her styles sell, no left-overs. Sure she makes big money. Three times as much as any of these little simps pulls down.” She glared at the men buyers, who could not have avoided hearing every word she said.

My next-seat neighbor at this place was a young man from Canada. He spent his time breathing darkly hideous threats against the Germans, what he would do once he “got across.” Bit by bit his fellow workers learned that soon after England entered the war he had induced the sixteen-year-old daughter of his employer, a prosperous farmer, to elope with him. When, in spite of his marriage he was called to the colors, he eloped alone to the United States, and had been living in New York under an assumed name.

It was a shame, he declared, that a young fellow of his ability should be forced to address envelopes. He had expected to get a position as manager of some millionaire’s farm—a sort of all-pay-and-no-work job. He would have got it, too, he assured us, if the people in the States were not so prejudiced against the Irish. Soon as would-be employers learned that he was not born in Canada, they turned against him, he asserted—gave the position to a “dirty Dago” or a man of some other inferior race.

Recalling the abundance of king-descended men and women of his race, I inquired about his forebears. Sure enough, he gave me a long list of kings and saints, and assured us all that only the tyranny of England prevented him from living in a palace without having to “turn a hand.”

The day that the addressers were paid off this slacker suggested to a lame man who sat across the table from him that it would be a friendly thing for him to start a subscription—get up enough money to pay his, the slacker’s, railroad fare back to Canada.

“If your wife’s daddy is so rich, why don’t you ask him to send you the money?” the lame man, a middle-aged Jew, asked.

“Him!” the young, healthy Irish-Canadian exclaimed contemptuously. “He don’t want I should come back. Both of his boys were killed by the Germans. Now he’s trying to turn my wife against me, saying I deserted her.”

“Well, didn’t you?” the lame man demanded. “You told me your child was more than a year old, and you’d never seen it. You said you had never got enough ahead to send your wife money.”

“She don’t need I should,” the slacker replied. “Her father’s richer than butter, and she’s all he’s got now.”

The lame man struggled to his feet and lifted his crutch.

“I’m a poor man,” he said, and taking his pay-envelope from his pocket he held it up, “but if I had a million dollars in this I wouldn’t give you a nickel. My father brought us from Poland when I was ten years old. When this war came my brother, the youngest of the family, was the only one able to fight. My father and I promised to care for his wife and four children.”

The lame man slipped his pay-envelope back into his pocket, then fitted the crutch under his arm. You might have heard a pin drop.

“Your brother’ll come back,” a woman addresser assured him hopefully.

The lame man straightened up and swung himself around on his crutch.

“Less than two months after he went away we got the news—he had been killed in battle.” He turned and faced the slacker. “My brother was a good husband,” he said; “he loved his children.” Clutching his hat and his little lunch-box in one hand, he stumped out.

This pay-day brought me a real surprise. Instead of counting the envelopes I learned that they reckoned by weight. My three days’ work, according to my own count, amounted to five thousand envelopes. Soon after the basket in which they had been packed was taken out, the girl with a face like a tomahawk hurried in and informed me that there were only three thousand and three hundred. Against the advice of my fellow addressers I demanded a recount—perhaps I should say a count, for they had been weighed, never counted.

After considerable bluster my work was turned over to another young girl. In the first box she found eighty-one while I found one hundred. On a second counting she also found one hundred. The difference in the second box was even greater. After that she evidently decided it was a hopeless task—trying to cheat me. According to her final count, I had addressed five thousand five hundred and fifty-seven. I was paid for five thousand.

Beyond a weak protest the day that I began work for Daskam & Howe the girl manager of the addressing department made no objection to my stopping work every day at four o’clock. That gave me time to eat a second cold lunch, and report at the West Side headquarters of the Suffrage Party by five. When applying for the position I told Miss Madeline Marks that I would be glad to be assigned to the tenement section of her district. Thereupon she assured me that she felt sure that I would be more useful on Riverside Drive and the adjacent side streets. So taking a list of voters to be seen, and a package of little yellow pledge-slips, I sallied forth.

The first voter on whom I called, like other individuals whom custom clothes in trousers, suffered from the hallucination of thinking himself a man. When I opened the conversation by saying that I had feared not finding him at home so early, five o’clock, he explained that, being a “gentleman of leisure,” he was always at home to charming ladies. Being aware that the race of fools had not been entirely exterminated, I allowed his explanation, along with the accompanying smirk, to pass unnoticed, and proceeded to business.

At the mention of suffrage his back stiffened and his eyes flashed green. When I offered him one of the yellow pledge-slips, asked him to sign it, he broke forth:

“You women!” he spit at me. “You’ve lost all sense of decency. Do you realize that our country is at war? Do you realize that men are dying? Do you realize it? Do you realize it?”

“I realize all of it,” I told him, rising to my feet, and I think my eyes flashed green. “Besides, I realize that every man at the front—fighting, dying, and dead—was brought into the world by a woman, who went through the jaws of death, suffered the pangs of hell, to give him birth.” I walked to the door of the drawing-room, then turned and glared at him, standing speechless beside his chair. “There’s something else I realize—the pity of it that a man like you has to be born of a woman, when you might just as well have been hatched out of a goose-egg.”

The footman, whom I had looked upon as an impassive piece of furniture, followed me out on the stoop.

“If you’ll give me one, lady,” he said, “I’ll be glad to sign it and send it in by mail.”

Halting on the corner I took myself to task. I admitted without regret that I had inherited all the temper of my Huguenot and Scot ancestors. What I did regret was having lost control of that temper, acting, as I considered, like a shrew. The following afternoon Miss Marks showed me two signed slips mailed from the same address—master and footman had pledged themselves to vote for the suffrage amendment.

“Lose your temper!—act like a shrew!” Miss Marks exclaimed, when I described the incident. “Do anything to get results like that. Why, that man has been for years a violent Anti.”

It was an Anti who converted me, made a living, working suffragist of me. The scene of my conversion was the State House of Massachusetts. The Suffrage Party was making its annual appeal to the lawmakers of their commonwealth. I attended the meeting because of a promise made, years before, to Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, not because of my interest in suffrage.

While in college Mrs. Howe had asked me to attend such a meeting, and I, because it was easier to say yes than no, had promised to do so. Not having any interest in the question, I forgot all about it until I learned from the Transcript that the meeting had taken place, and that Mrs. Howe had been the chief speaker. Having been brought up in the faith that no well-bred man or woman will intentionally break a promise, I hastened to call on Mrs. Howe and apologize. I told her the truth—that I had forgotten.

As always, Mrs. Howe was kind and sympathetic. When I was telling her good-by, while she was still holding my hands, she asked me to give her another promise—to attend such a meeting at the State House at my earliest opportunity. That opportunity came while I was taking a graduate course at Radcliffe—Professor Baker’s course in playwriting.

Learning from the morning paper that the Suffrage Party was to make its annual appeal in the State House that afternoon, quite a little while after the appointed hour I drifted in. It was a long room with high ceiling, and I knew that the broad windows on the side facing the door by which I entered overlooked Charlestown and the Charles River.

That side, the Charles River side, was packed—every seat taken, and numbers of women standing against the wall. On the side next the door there were a good many vacant seats, and without giving the matter a thought, I took my place beside a woman, who, catching my eye, made room for me. There were several speeches for and against.

Then a little wisp of a woman got up. She had the face of a blighted new-born baby—wrinkled and old as the human race. And in her eyes there shone the patient acceptance of the curse: “The sins of the fathers shall be visited on their children, to the third and fourth generation.”

She was from Lawrence, Massachusetts, and had been working in the mills since she was ten years old. For years she had supported her delicate mother and her younger brothers and sisters. These younger ones, having been forced into the mills before they were strong enough, had sickened and dropped off like so many flies. So at last she was left the sole support of a bedridden mother.

She told of conditions in the mills, and I knew she spoke the truth. For it was soon after the notorious “Lawrence strike,” during which I had journeyed down from Cambridge and spent a week in the mill town. This ill-fed little feminine creature, who had never known a care-free day in her whole life, ended her statement with the appeal:

“Gentlemen, you tell me a woman’s place is the home. Ah, gentlemen, if I only had a home I’d be too glad to stay in it. I know you can’t give me a home—there are too many like me. But you can give me the ballot.” She bent toward the men on the rostrum, the law-makers. “Please give it to me,” she pleaded, her little voice so husky that it was hardly more than a hoarse whisper. “Please give me the ballot. Then I can vote, stand a chance of getting my work hours limited. You don’t let ’em work a horse day and night, gentlemen. Give me a horse’s chance. Give me the ballot, gentlemen.”

There may have been applause when she slipped back into her seat. But if so I was unconscious of it. My heart was like a throbbing, aching tooth in my bosom. Was there really a God in heaven?

Then across the aisle from the little woman a man stepped out. Such a man as would make you feel sure that at his birth his mother might have proclaimed with pride: “Behold, I have brought forth a man child; a man made in the image of his Maker.”

From the tips of his polished shoes to the crown of his waving iron-gray hair he personified “the best”—the best breed, the best care, the best food, the best education, the best fashion, always the best and only the best. The jewel in his scarf-pin or one of the rings on his hand would have made the puny factory worker comfortable for the balance of her days, would have given her a home.

The way he railed at her—that great, strong, well-fed, handsomely dressed, handsome man. He not only shook his finger in her face, but he threatened her and all suffragists against following the example of the militant Englishwomen, who he claimed had poured acid in the letter-boxes of London. While I did not see him actually grit his teeth, that was his manner—gritting his teeth and foaming at the mouth with fury.

At the end he gathered himself together, raising himself to his full height, and proclaimed his contempt for the women before him. The “ladies” of his acquaintance not only would refuse to vote were the ballot given them, but they would draw their skirts aside to keep from coming in contact with such despicable representatives of their sex.

When he finished, the women around me clapped and shouted like mad. Amazed, I turned to the woman next me and asked what she meant by it.

“He’s on our side,” she told me, her face glowing with satisfied pride. “He is our chief speaker. Applaud him. Applaud him.”

I saw a great light. In my stupidity I had taken a seat among the Antis. Rising I crossed over the aisle. There was no seat, so I took my stand at the back of the room against the wall. A hand reached back and touched me.

“I recognized you,” a sweet voice whispered, “and I knew you had gotten in the wrong pew.” It was a daughter of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe.

As a result of that man’s harangue a few months later I travelled more than one hundred miles to march in the suffrage parade through Boston. Now I not only worked for the sake of rubbing my rabbit’s foot and giving them the victory, but for the sake of getting behind the scenes and learning by my own personal observations whether or no the women leaders of the party were competent executives.

I held a good many positions during my four years in the underbrush. In none did I find more competent leadership. In none did I ever see such indomitable pluck and perseverance, such undaunted courage. It takes courage, real courage, to work on regardless of insult and flattery. Especially when the insults and sneers come from those with whom you are the most closely associated. It takes pluck and perseverance to lay siege and to hammer and hammer and hammer to break down prejudice in small minds. That is what being a leader of the Suffrage Party meant.

At the end of my week I was paid the promised ten dollars as promptly as I would have been by any other first-class business organization. On Monday evening I marched in the last suffrage parade in New York City, from the West Side headquarters to Durland’s. Much to the surprise of the marchers about me I insisted on carrying both a heavy banner and a transparency.

The day after that election which gave the women of New York State the ballot I went to work for the International Young Men’s Christian Association—proof-reader in the multigraph department, otherwise known as the “guts” of the Association. Through our hands passed every order, every report, every circular of every sort before it was given to the public. Down in two little dark basement rooms we worked under electricity from eight-thirty until—many times after 10 P. M.