The woman replied that they were anything but a funeral procession, and threatened darkly to hold their parade in spite of police regulations.  They got plenty of newspaper publicity in the succeeding days, and on the following Sunday a huge crowd of men, a sprinkling of women, a generous number of plain clothes men, and New York’s famous “camera squad” assembled in Union Square, where all incendiary things happen.  The dauntless seven who made up the suffrage club were there, and at the psychological moment one of the women ran up the steps of a park pavilion and spoke in a ringing voice, yet so quietly that the police made no move 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.