f their speakers on the platform.

This was not often refused, and it was just as easy to get this
permission from Democrats as from Republicans. The former felt that if
the amendment should carry they would not object to a little of the
credit, and they soon found also that the women were a drawing card.
Whenever there was a purely Populist meeting, a conspicuous place and
all the time desired were given to the women, but at Republican,
Democratic or Fusion meetings, they always were placed at the end of the
program and allowed only five or, at most, ten minutes. In order simply
to get this little word, the women speakers would make long journeys and
sit on the platform until every long-winded male orator had finished his
speech, and until they were ready to drop from their chairs. But the
audience waited for them, no matter how late, and never failed to
receive them with the wildest enthusiasm. Many times when the managers
would have been willing to sandwich them between other speakers, the
latter would object, saying the people would go home as soon as the
women had finished!

As the campaign wore on it became a fight for life with the political
parties. The Call, which had come out so valiantly for woman suffrage,
had been struck in a vital part, i.e., in the counting-room, by the
opponents of this measure, who withdrew valuable advertising and in
every possible way sought to injure the paper. Its support was used by
the other wing of the Republican party to create a prejudice against the
candidates it advocated; the principal stockholders were not friendly to
the amendment; as the organ of the Central Committee it was deprived of
independent action. So it was not surprising that, long before the close
of the campaign, the great fight which the Call agreed to make had
dwindled to an occasional skirmish when the pleading of the women grew
too strong to be resisted.

Almost without exception the Republican orators were silent on the
question of woman suffrage, even those who personally favored it. The
women wrote them, interviewed them and begged them to advocate the first
plank in their platform as they did all the rest, and occasionally when
they would go in a body and sit on the front seats to watch the speaker,
he would say a few mild words in favor of the amendment, but there were
several of the Democrats who did as much. Some of the Populists
advocated it, but the most prominent, who always before had spoken f