r of that cause?"

"I most certainly will," she replied, adding as the audience cheered
her wildly, "for I would surely choose to ask votes for the party
which stood for the principle of justice to women, though wrong on
financial theories, rather than for the party which was sound on
questions of money and tariff, and silent on the pending amendment to
secure political equality to half of the people."

"I most certainly will" was the phrase which was remembered and was
flashed through the country, and as a result, the Republican press and
Susan's Republican friends harshly criticized her for taking her stand
with the radicals.

Like all political parties, the Populists found it hard to comprehend
justice for women, but after a four-hour debate, the convention
endorsed the woman suffrage amendment, absolving, however, members who
refused to support it. The rank and file rejoiced as if each and every
one of them were heart and soul for the cause. They cheered, they
waved their canes, they threw their hats high in the air, and then
swarmed around Susan and Anna Shaw to shake their hands and welcome
them into the Populist party.

With woman suffrage at last a political issue in Kansas, Susan left
the field to her "girls." Her homecoming brought reporters to 17
Madison Street for the details about her alignment with the Populist
party. "I didn't go over to the Populists," she told them. "I have
been like a drowning man for a long time, waiting for someone to throw
a plank in my direction. I didn't step on the whole platform, but just
on the woman suffrage plank.... Here is a party in power which is
likely to remain in power, and if it will give its endorsement to our
movement, we want it."[390]

This explanation, however, did not satisfy her critics, and as the
Republican press circulated false stories about her enthusiasm for the
Populist party, letters of protest poured in, among them one from
Henry Blackwell. To him, she replied, "I shall not praise the
Republicans of Kansas, or wish or work for their success, when I know
by their own confessions to me that the rights of the women of their
state have been traded by them in cold blood for the votes of the
lager beer foreigners and whisky Democrats.... I never, in my whole
forty years work, so utterly repudiated any set of politicians as I do
those Republicans of Kansas.... I never was surer of my position that
no self-respecting woman should wish or work for the suc