ore the House
judiciary committee the very morning the convention opened.

[Illustration: Victoria C. Woodhull]

Convinced that she and her colleagues must attend that hearing, Susan
consulted with her friends in Congress and overrode Mrs. Hooker's
hesitancy about associating their organization with so questionable a
woman as Victoria Woodhull. She engaged a constitutional lawyer,
Albert G. Riddle,[262] to represent the 30,000 women who had
petitioned Congress for the franchise. Then she and Mrs. Hooker
attended the hearing and asked for prompt action on woman suffrage.
This was the first Congressional hearing on federal enfranchisement.
Previous hearings had considered trying the experiment only in the
District of Columbia.

Susan had never before seen Victoria Woodhull. Early in 1870, however,
she had called at the brokerage office which Victoria and her sister,
Tennessee Claflin, had opened in New York on Broad Street. The press
had been full of amused comments regarding the lady bankers, and
Susan had wanted to see for herself what kind of women they were. Here
she met and talked with Tennessee Claflin, publishing their interview
in _The Revolution_, and also an advertisement of Woodhull, Claflin &
Co., Bankers and Brokers.[263]

About six weeks later, these prosperous "lady brokers" had established
their own paper, _Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly_, an "Organ of Social
Regeneration and Constructive Reform," but Susan had barely noticed
its existence, so burdened had she been by the impending loss of her
own paper and by pressing lecture engagements. She was therefore
unaware that this new weekly explored a field wider than finance,
advocating as well woman suffrage and women's advancement,
spiritualism, radical views on marriage, love, and sex, and the
nomination of Victoria C. Woodhull for President of the United States.

Now in a committee room of the House of Representatives, Susan
listened carefully as the dynamic beautiful Victoria Woodhull read her
Memorial and her arguments to support it, in a clear well-modulated
voice. Simply dressed in a dark blue gown, with a jaunty Alpine hat
perched on her curls, she gave the impression of innocent earnest
youth, and she captivated not only the members of the judiciary
committee, but the more critical suffragists as well. For the moment
at least she seemed an appropriate colleague of the forthright
crusader, Susan B. Anthony, and her fashionable friends, Isabella
Be