The exciting national election contest was approaching. Party conventions were scheduled to meet in June while the amendment languished at the Capitol. It was clear that more highly organized woman-power would have to be called into action before the national government would speed its pace. To the women voters the Eastern women went for decisive assistance. A car known as the "Suffrage Special," carrying distinguished Eastern women and gifted speakers, made an extensive tour of the West and under the banner of the Congressional Union called again upon the women voters to come to Chicago on June 5th to form a new party,-The Woman's Party[1]-to serve as long as should be necessary as the balance of power in national contests, and thus to force action from the old parties.

The instant response which met this appeal surpassed the most optimistic hopes. Thousands of women assembled in Chicago for this convention, which became epoch-making not only in .the suffrage fight but in the whole woman movement. For the first time in history, women came together to organize their political power into a party to free their own sex. For the first time in history representatives of men's political parties came to plead before these women voters for the support of their respective parties.

The Republican Party sent as its representatives John Hays Hammond and C. S. Osborn, formerly Governor of Michigan. The Democrats sent their most persuasive orator, President Wilson's friend, Dudley Field Malone, Collector of the Port of New York. Allan Benson, candidate for the Presidency on the Socialist ticket, represented the Socialist Party. Edward Polling, Prohibition leader, spoke for the Prohibition Party, arid Victor Murdock and Gifford Pinchot for The Progressive Party.

All laid their claims for suffrage support before the women with the result that the convention resolved itself into another political party-The Woman's Party. A new party with but one plank-the immediate passage of the federal suffrage amendment-a party determined to withhold its support from all existing parties until women were politically free, and to punish politically any party in power which did not use its

[1]The Woman's Party started with a membership of all Congressional Union members in suffrage states. Anne Martin of Nevada was elected chairman. power to free women; a party which became a potent factor of protest in the following national election.

This first step towards the solidarity of women quickly brought results. The Republican National Convention, meeting immediately. after the Woman's Party Convention, and the Democratic National Convention the week following, both included suffrage planks in their national platforms for the first time in history. To be sure, they were planks that failed to satisfy us. But the mere hint of organized political action on suffrage had moved the two dominant parties to advance a step. The new Woman's Party had declared suffrage a national political issue. The two major parties acknowledged the issue by writing it into their party platforms.