Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/750

 can conventions since 1868, and although it was weakened by the qualifying declaration, she realized that an immense gain had been made. By the press throughout the country the adoption of the plank was hailed as "a victory of supreme importance," and as guaranteeing a suffrage plank in the Democratic national platform, which could not have been obtained without it. It was adopted by the convention without opposition and with great enthusiasm.

The Democratic convention met in St. Louis June 14-16. The first day the suffragists staged their "walkless parade," which the press poetically called "the golden lane," as the 6,000 white-robed women who formed a continuous lane from the convention headquarters in the Jefferson Hotel to the Coliseum where the convention was held carried yellow parasols and wore yellow satin sashes. They gave resplendent color to the aisle through which hundreds of delegates walked to their political councils. On the steps of the Art Museum the suffragists presented a striking tableau showing Liberty, a symbolic figure effectively garbed, surrounded by three groups of women, those in black typifying the non-suffrage States; those in gray representing the partial suffrage States; those in red, white and blue the States where political equality prevailed. The suffragists had now no difficulty in obtaining a hearing and plenty of time. Representatives of the National American Association, the National Woman's Party, the Southern States Woman Suffrage Conference and the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage appeared before the sub-committee of the Resolutions Committee.

The entire Resolutions Committee met in the evening of the 15th to make the final draft of the platform. Although it was a foregone conclusion that it would have to contain a woman suffrage plank the enemies did not intend to concede it willingly. It was not reached until 3 o'clock in the morning, when platform building was suspended while a contest raged. The sleepy committeemen became wide awake and their voices rose till they could be heard in the corridors and out into the street. The unqualified endorsement of woman suffrage asked for by the National Association was defeated by a vote of 24 to 20. The approval of the Federal Amendment asked for by the National