to stop her.

"Friends," she said, "we are not allowed to have our parade, so we are
going to hold a meeting of protest at No. 209 East 23d Street. We invite
you to go over there with us." She and the others walked calmly out of
the square, and the crowd followed. They turned into Fifth Avenue, and
the crowd grew larger. Before three blocks were passed there were
literally thousands of people marching in the wake of ingenious
suffragists.

The sight aroused the indignation of many respectable citizens.

"Officer," exclaimed one of these, addressing an attendant policeman, "I
thought you had orders that those females were not to parade."

"That ain't no parade," said the policeman, serenely; "them folks is
just takin' a quiet walk."

The suffragists have taken more than one quiet walk since then. Street
speaking has become an almost daily occurrence. At first there was some
rioting, or, rather, some display of rowdyism on the part of the
spectators and some show of interference from the police. The crowds
listen respectfully now, and the police are friendly.

The most practical move the New York Suffragists have made was the
organization, early in 1910, of the Woman Suffrage Party, a fusion of
nearly all the suffrage clubs in the greater city into an association
exactly along the lines of a regular political party. At the head of the
party as president is Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the
International Woman Suffrage Association. Each of the five boroughs of
the city has a chairman, and each senatorial and assembly district is
either organized or is in process of organization.

[Illustration: THE WOMEN'S TRADES PROCESSION TO THE ALBERT HALL MEETING,
APRIL 27, 1909]

Absolutely democratic in its spirit and its organization, the party
leaders are drawn from every rank of society. The chairman of the
borough of Manhattan is Mrs. James Lees Laidlaw, wife of a prominent
Wall Street banker. Mrs. Frederick Nathan, president of the New York
State Consumers' League, is chairman of the assembly district in which
she lives. Mrs. Melvil Dewey, whose husband is head of a department at
Columbia University, is chairman of her own district. Other chairmen are
Helen Hoy Greeley, lawyer; Lavinia Dock, trained nurse; Anna Mercy, an
East Side physician; Maud Flowerton, buyer in a department store;
Gertrude Barnum, sociologist and writer. Practically every trade and
profession are represented in the party's ranks.

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