This thesis challenges the conventional wisdom that the W.S.P.U.'s strategy choices were unimportant in regard to winning women's suffrage. It confirms the hypothesis that the long-range strategy of the W.S.P.U. was to escalate coercion until the Government exhausted its powers of opposition and conceded, but to interrupt this strategy whenever favorable bargaining opportunities with the Government and third parties developed. In addition to filling an apparent research gap by systematically analyzing these choices, this thesis synthesizes and tests several piecemeal theories of social movements within the general framework of the natural history approach. The analysis utilizes data drawn from movement leaders' autobiographies, documentary accounts of the militant movement, and the standard histories of the entire British women's suffrage movement. Additionally, extensive use is made of contemporary periodicals and miscellaneous works on related movements.

The purpose of the study have been: (1) to provide an explanatory, descriptive, and analytic viewpoint of the functions and structure of crisis intervention centers (2) to provide an intensive investigation of counseling and treatment practices in crisis intervention centers and (3) to relate the experiences that the writer has encountered as a resident counselor at Help House Inc. (twenty-four hour drug and crisis intervention center in Denton, Texas) to sociological, psychological, social psychological and philosophical constructs that deal with or pertain to crisis intervention, particularly in the area of drug use. The study indicates how participatory observation serves as an aid in acquiring insight into sociological areas such as crisis intervention centers. The role of the participatory observer is most important because concepts and theories arise out of actual situations.