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23O HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE to the retiring chairman, Mrs. Holmes, from her fellow workers, and she was unanimously chosen honorary chairman of the new league. RATIFICATION. On the eve of departure for the national con- vention in February, 1920, Mrs. Holmes, chairman of the Woman Suffrage Party, went to John M. Parker, who had just been nominated for Governor by the Democratic party, and asked: "If the thirty-sixth State ratifies the Federal Suffrage Amend- ment while we are in Chicago will you send Mrs. Carrie Chap- man Catt a telegram of congratulations?" To this he answered: "You write a message and sign my name to it I'll stand for anything you may say." "If, however, the amendment is not ratified and it becomes necessary for Louisiana to make the fight for it," Mrs. Holmes continued, "what must I tell Mrs. Catt you will do?" "Just say to her," he replied, "that I am a suf- fragist, and she will understand." Mr. Parker had joined the Progressive party in 1912 and in 1916 he had made a campaign as its candidate for vice-president on a platform that strongly endorsed the Federal Suffrage Amendment, so his support of ratification was fully expected. On their return from the convention the leaders of the Party began to line up the important men of the State by letter and by personal interviews. Beginning with the ex-Governors, they secured the endorsement of L. E. Hall, H. C. Warmoth, N. C. Blanchard, Jared Y. Sanders and W. W. Heard Against these, however, was the present Governor, Ruffin G. Pleasant, who took an aggressive stand for State's rights, although at a public ban- quet eight months earlier he had told the women that 'if Louis- iana women could not obtain the ballot by State enactment he would favor Federal action.' Among those who declared for ratification were J. J. Bailey, Paul Capdeville, F. R. Grace, T. R. Harris, A. V. Coco, Semmes Walmsley, Rufus E. Foster, Howell Morgan, Percy Saint, E. N. Stafford, Phanor Breazeale, Donald- son Caffery and many other men of affairs. The New Orleans Item had always advocated woman suffrage and the Federal Amendment especially; the Times-Picayune now approved rati- fication, as did nearly all the papers in the State. The Orleans Democratic Association, which had put Governor Parker in