The Story of the Woman's Party — Edition Insights

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Authors: Gillmore, Inez Haynes, 1873-1970 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2018 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Women -- Suffrage -- United States; Paul, Alice, 1885-1977; National Woman's Party Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 163,522

Reading time 711 min

Text sections 47

For The Story of the Woman's Party — Edition Insights, the stored edition analysis reports 163,522 words, 11 hr 51 min estimated reading time, and 47 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 17.9 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Women -- Suffrage -- United States,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #56701

Inez Haynes Irwin's 1921 account of the National Woman's Party, based on photographs and documents, traces the militant suffrage campaign from 1913 to ratification. The excerpts show a focus on organized protest, legal confrontation, and the personal costs borne by activists.

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Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

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File: pg56701

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in Alice Paul this power and what were the qualities back of that training, which made it possible for her to invent so masterly a plan, to pursue it so resistlessly?

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I watched a river of women, Rippling purple, white and golden, Stream toward the National Capitol.

Along its border, Like a purple flower floating, Moved a young woman, worn, wraithlike, With eyes alight, keenly observing the marchers. Out there on the curb, she looked so little, so lonely; Few appeared even to see her; No one saluted her.

Yet commander was she of the column, its leader; She was the spring whence arose that irresistible river of women Streaming steadily towards the National Capitol. KATHERINE ROLSTON FISHER, _The Suffragist_, January 19, 1918.

IT is an interesting coincidence that the woman who bore the greatest single part in the Suffrage fight at the beginning—Susan Anthony—and the woman who bore the greatest single part at the end—Alice Paul—were both Quakers.

It is very difficult to get Alice Paul to talk about herself. She is not much interested in herself and she is interested, with every atom of her, in the work she is doing. She will tell you, if you ask her, that she was born in Moorestown, New Jersey, and then her interest seems to die. She apparently does not remember herself very clearly either as a child or a young girl. That is not strange. So intently has she worked in the last eight years and so intensely has she lived in that work that each year seems to have erased its predecessor. She is absolutely concentrated on _now_. I asked Alice Paul once what converted her to Woman Suffrage. She said that she could not remember when she did not believe in it. She added, “You know the Quakers have always believed in Woman Suffrage.”

Anne Herendeen, in a vivacious article on Alice Paul in _Everybody’s Magazine_ for October, 1919, says, describing a visit to Moorestown:

“What do you think of all these goings-on?” I asked her mother. She sighed.

“Well, Mr. Paul always used to say, when there was anything hard and disagreeable to be done, ‘I bank on Alice.’”

The degree of education in Alice Paul’s life and the amount of social service which she had performed are a little staggering in view of her youth. Just the list of the degrees she achieved and the positions she held before she started the National Woman’s Party covers a typewritten page. They have even an unexpected international quality. One notes first—and without undue astonishment—that she acquired a B.A. at Swarthmore in 1905; an M.A. at the University of Pennsylvania in 1907; a Ph.D. at the same university in 1912. This would seem enough to fill the educational leisure of most young women, but it does not by any means complete Alice Paul’s student career. She was a graduate of the New York School of Philanthropy in 1906. She was a student at the Woodbrooke Settlement for Social Work at Woodbrooke, Birmingham, and in the University of Birmingham, England, in 1907-08; a graduate student in sociology and economics in the School of Economics of the University of London in 1908-09.

She was, in addition, a Resident Worker of the New York College Settlement in 1905-06; a Visitor for the New York Charity Organization Society in the summer of 1906; a Worker in the Summer Lane Settlement, and a Visitor in the Charity Organization Society of Birmingham, England, during the winter of 1907-08; Assistant-secretary to the Dalston Branch of the Charity Organization Society in London for a half year in 1908; a Visitor for the Peel Institute for Social Work at Clerkenwell, London, for a half year in 1908-09; a Resident Worker for the Christian Social Union Settlement of Hoxton, London, in the summer of 1908. She was also in charge of the Women’s Department of the branch of adult schools at Hoxton in the summer of 1908.

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Inez Haynes Irwin opens The Story of the Woman's Party with a dedication that sets the tone: the book is offered “admiringly and reverently” to the Party’s members, especially those whose work could not be individually mentioned. The front matter includes a photograph of Alice Paul taken the day before she went to prison, and epigraphs from Susan B. Anthony—her last public words, insisting the fight must not cease. These elements frame the narrative as a tribute to collective sacrifice, not a detached history.

The table of contents reveals a four-part structure: 1913–1914, 1915–1916, 1917, and “Victory.” Part Three’s subheadings—such as “The Peaceful Picketing,” “The War on Pickets,” and “The Strange Ladies”—signal that Irwin will chronicle escalating confrontations with the state. The excerpts from later in the book describe a coordinated protest in November 1917, when forty-one women marched in five groups to the White House gates, bearing “golden-lettered banners” and “purple, white, and gold flags.”

The Dedication and Epigraphs as a Lens

The book’s front matter is more than ornament. Irwin’s dedication singles out “the inspired, devoted, untiring, and self-sacrificing members” and explicitly acknowledges those whose efforts “may never even in the future be properly appreciated.” This language anticipates a narrative that will foreground collective action over individual fame. The epigraph from Susan B. Anthony—her last public words, spoken in 1906—warns that “the fight must not cease; you must see that it does not stop.” By placing this call to perseverance before the first chapter, Irwin signals that the Woman’s Party saw itself as continuing Anthony’s unfinished work. The photograph of Alice Paul “taken the day before she went to prison” visually anchors the text in the reality of arrest and imprisonment. Readers encountering these elements first will understand that the book intends to honor endurance under legal persecution.

Structure as a Chronology of Escalation

The table of contents maps a clear arc from organization to victory. Part One (1913–1914) covers the founding of the Party and early pressure on Congress and President Wilson. Part Two (1915–1916) introduces the Woman’s Party as a formal entity and describes appeals to women voters. Part Three (1917) is dominated by the “Perpetual Delegation” and its sub-sections: “Peaceful Picketing,” “Peaceful Reception,” “War on Pickets,” “The Court and the Pickets,” and “The Strange Ladies.” This progression from peaceful protest to state repression is mirrored in the language of the headings. Part Four, “Victory,” includes chapters on lobbying, the president’s capitulation, ratification, and “The Last Days.” The structure itself tells a story of mounting conflict—from lobbying to picketing to imprisonment—before resolution. Readers can use this outline to track the Party’s tactical evolution.

The November 1917 Picket: A Case Study in Method

The excerpt from Part Three describes a carefully orchestrated protest on November 10, 1917. Forty-one women marched from headquarters in five groups, each led by a named organizer. The first group was led by Mrs. John Winters Brannan; the fifth by Mary A. Nolan, described as “little, frail, lame, seventy years old.” Irwin notes that the pickets carried “golden-lettered banners” and “purple, white, and gold flags,” and walked “slowly—always a banner’s length apart.” The police arrested each group in turn, and the crowd applauded. One voice called out: “Keep right on! You’ll make them give it to you!” The passage includes a full list of the forty-one women’s names, a deliberate act of documentation. Irwin’s prose is precise and visual, emphasizing the ritualized nature of the protest—the signals, the grouping, the arrest—and the public’s shift from indifference to support.

Voice and the Use of Documentary Detail

Irwin’s narrative voice is that of a sympathetic chronicler who lets facts speak. She does not editorialize about the justice of the cause; instead, she reports actions, names, and numbers. The list of forty-one pickets, complete with full names and group assignments, reads like a roll call. The description of the protest includes precise details: the cleaning-woman who carried messages between Alice Paul and headquarters; the signal given by Katherine Morey and Catherine Flanagan; the “prearranged signal” that sent the crowd running under Paul’s window. These details ground the story in lived experience. Irwin also notes the legal charge—“obstructing traffic”—and the plea of “Not Guilty.” The effect is to create a documentary record that feels both immediate and archival. Readers should pay attention to how Irwin balances individual stories (Mary A. Nolan’s age and frailty) with the collective action of the group.

Because the excerpts are drawn from the middle and later portions of the book, they show the Woman’s Party at its most militant—organizing mass pickets, accepting arrest, and using the courts as a stage. The opening sections, which cover the Party’s formation and early lobbying, are not represented here. Readers should expect the tone and tactics to shift over the course of the narrative. Irwin’s method is cumulative: she builds her account through lists, dates, and names, trusting that the accumulation of detail will convey the scale of the movement. Approaching the book as a documentary history rather than a memoir will help readers appreciate its structure and purpose.

I kept thinking about the silence of those polling-place vigils, the patient weight of women waiting in the cold. It reminded me, oddly, of the Biographical catalogue of the portraits at Weston, the seat of the Earl of Bradford — Reading Notes, where every face holds a private history unspoken above the caption. Different rooms, but the same quiet duty of remembering.