Chapter 2. A Militant General—Alice Paul
Part II. Political Action
Chapter 1. Women Invade the Capital
Chapter 2. Women Voters Organize
Chapter 3. The Last Deputation to President Wilson
Part III. Militancy
Chapter 1. Picketing a President
Chapter 2. The Suffrage War Policy
Chapter 3. The First Arrests
Chapter 4. Occoquan Workhouse
Chapter 5. August Riots
Chapter 6. Prison Episodes
Chapter 7. An Administration Protest—Dudley Field Malone Resigns
Chapter 8. The Administration Yields
Chapter 9. Political Prisoners
Chapter 10. The Hunger Strike—A Weapon
Chapter 11. Administration Terrorism
Chapter 12. Alice Paul in Prison
Chapter 13. Administration—Lawlessness Exposed
Chapter 14. The Administration Outwitted
Chapter 15. Political Results
Chapter 16. An Interlude (Seven Months)
Chapter 17. New Attacks on the President
Chapter 18. The President Appeals to the Senate Too Late
Chapter 19. More Pressure
Chapter 20. The President Sails Away
Chapter 21. Watchfires of Freedom
Chapter 22. Burned in Effigy
Chapter 23. Boston Militants Welcome the President
Chapter 24. Democratic Congress Ends
Chapter 25. A Farewell to President Wilson
Chapter 26. President Wilson Wins the 64th Vote in Paris
Chapter 27. Republican Congress Passes Amendment
Appendices
Illustrations
Alice Paul
Mrs. O.H.P. Belmont
Democrats Attempt to Counteract Woman’s Party Campaign
Inez Milholland Boissevain
Scene of Memorial Service-Statuary Hall, the Capitol
Scenes on the Picket Line
Monster Picket—March 4, 1917
Officer Arrests Pickets
Women Put into Police Patrol
Suffragists in Prison Costume
Fellow Prisoners
Sewing Room at Occoquan Workhouse
Riotous Scenes on Picket Line
Dudley Field Malone
Lucy Burns
Mrs. Mary Nolan, Oldest Picket
Miss Matilda Young, Youngest Picket
Forty-One Women Face Jail
Prisoners Released
“Lafayette We Are Here”
Wholesale Arrests
Suffragists March to LaFayette Monument
Torch-Bearer, and Escorts
Some Public Men Who Protested Against Imprisonment of Suffragists
Abandoned Jail
Prisoners on Straw Pallets on Jail Floor
Pickets at Capitol
Senate Pages and Capitol Police Attack Pickets
The Urn Guarded by Miss Berthe Arnold
The Bell Which Tolled the Change of Watch
Watchfire “Legal”
Watchfire Scattered by Police-Dr. Caroline Spencer Rebuilding it
One Hundred Women Hold Public Conflagration
Pickets in Front of Reviewing Stand, Boston
Mrs. Louise Sykes Burning President Wilson’s Speech on Boston Common
Suffrage Prisoners
To
Alice Paul
Through Whose Brilliant and Devoted Leadership the Women of America
Have Been Able to Consummate with Gladness and Gallant Courage Their
Long Struggle for Political Liberty, This Book is Affectionately
Dedicated
PREFACE
This book deals with the intensive campaign of the militant suffragists
of America [1913-1919] to win a solitary thing-the passage by Congress
of the national suffrage amendment enfranchising women. It is the story
of the first organized militant ,political action in America to this
end. The militants differed from the pure propagandists in the woman
suffrage movement chiefly in that they had a clear comprehension of the
forces which prevail in politics. They appreciated the necessity of the
propaganda stage and the beautiful heroism of those who had led in the
pioneer agitation, but they knew that this stage belonged to the past;
these methods were no longer necessary or effective.
For convenience sake I have called Part II “Political Action,” and Part
III “Militancy,” although it will be perceived that the entire campaign
was one of militant political action. The emphasis, however, in Part II
is upon political action, although certainly with a militant mood. In
Part III dramatic acts of protest, such as are now commonly called
militancy, are given emphasis as they acquired a greater importance
during the latter part of the campaign. This does not mean that all
militant deeds were not committed for a specific political purpose.
They were. But militancy is as much a state of mind, an approach to a
task, as it is the commission of deeds of protest. It is the state of
mind of those who is their fiery idealism do not lose sight of the real
springs of human action.
There are two ways in which this story might be told. It might be told
as a tragic and harrowing tale of martyrdom. Or it might be told as a
ruthless enterprise of compelling a hostile administration to subject
women to martyrdom in order to hasten its surrender. The truth is, it
has elements of both ruthlessness and martyrdom. And I have tried to
make them appear in a true proportion. It is my sincere hope that you
will understand and appreciate the martyrdom involved, for it was the
conscious voluntary gift of beautiful, strong and young hearts. But it
was never martyrdom for its own sake. It was martyrdom used for a
practical purpose.
The narrative ends with the passage of the amendment by Congress. The
campaign for ratification, which extended over fourteen months, is a
story in itself. The ratification of the amendment by the 36th and last
state legislature proved as difficult to secure from political leaders
as the 64th and last vote in the United States Senate.
This book contains my interpretations, which are of course arguable.
But it is a true record of events.
DORIS STEVENS.
_New York, August_, 1920.
“I do pray, and that most earnestly and constantly, for some terrific
shock to startle the women o f the nation into a self-respect which
mill compel them to, see the absolute degradation o f their present
position; which will compel them to break their yoke of bondage and
give them faith in themselves; which will make them proclaim their
allegiance to women first . . . . The fact is, women are in chains, and
their servitude is all the more debasing because they do not realize
it. O to compel them to see and feel and to give them the courage and
the conscience to speak and act for their own freedom, though they face
the scorn and contempt of all the world for doing it!”
Susan B. Anthony, 1872.
Part I
Leadership
Chapter 1
A Militant Pioneer—Susan B. Anthony
Susan B. Anthony was the first militant suffragist. She has been so
long proclaimed only as the magnificent pioneer that few realize that
she was the first woman to defy the law for the political liberty of
her sex.
The militant spirit was in her many early protests. Sometimes these
protests were supported by one or two followers; more often they were
solitary protests. Perhaps it is because of their isolation that they
stand out so strong and beautiful in a turbulent time in our history
when all those about her were making compromises.
It was this spirit which impelled her to keep alive the cause of the
enfranchisement of women during the passionate years of the Civil War.
She held to the last possible moment that no national exigency was
great enough to warrant abandonment of woman’s fight for independence.
But one by one her followers deserted her. She was unable to keep even
a tiny handful steadfast to this position. She became finally the only
figure in the nation appealing for the rights of women when the rights
of black men were agitating the public mind. Ardent abolitionist as she
was, she could not tolerate without indignant protest the exclusion of
women in all discussions of emancipation. The suffrage war policy of
Miss Anthony can be compared to that of the militants a half century
later when confronted with the problem of this country’s entrance into
the world war.
The war of the rebellion over and the emancipation of the negro man
written into the constitution, women contended they had a right to vote
under the new fourteenth amendment. Miss Anthony led in this agitation,
urging all women to claim the right to vote under this amendment. In
the national election of 1872 she voted in Rochester, New York, her
home city, was arrested, tried and convicted of the crime of “voting
without having a lawful right to vote.”
I cannot resist giving a brief excerpt from the court records of this
extraordinary case, so reminiscent is it of the cases of the suffrage
pickets tried nearly fifty years later in the courts of the national
capital.
After the prosecuting attorney had presented the government’s case,
Judge Hunt read his opinion, said to have been written before the case
had been heard, and directed the jury to bring in a verdict of guilty.
The jury was dismissed without deliberation and a new trial was
refused. On the following day this scene took place in that New York
court room.
JUDGE HUNT (Ordering the defendant to stand up)-Has the prisoner
anything to say why sentence shall not be pronounced?
Miss ANTHONY—Yes, your Honor, I have many things to say; for in your
ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled under foot every vital
principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my
political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored. Robbed of
the fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am degraded from the status
of a citizen to that of a subject; and not only myself individually,
but all my sex are, by your Honor’s verdict doomed to political
subjection under this so-called republican form of government.
JUDGE HUNT—The Court cannot. listen to a rehearsal of argument which
the prisoner’s counsel has already consumed three hours in presenting.
Miss ANTHONY—May it please your Honor, I am not arguing the question,
but simply stating the reasons why sentence cannot in justice be
pronounced against me. Your denial of my citizen’s right to vote, is
the denial of my right of consent as one of the governed, the denial of
my right of representation as one taxed, the denial of my right to a
trial by jury of my peers as an offender against law; therefore, the
denial of my sacred right to life, liberty, property, and——
JUDGE HUNT—The Court cannot allow the prisoner to go on.
Miss ANTHONY—But, your Honor will not deny me this one and only poor
privilege of protest against this highhanded outrage upon my citizen’s
rights. May it please the Court to remember that since the day of my
arrest last November this is the first time that either myself or any
person of my disfranchised class has been allowed a word of defense
before judge or jury
JUDGE HUNT—The prisoner must sit down, the Court cannot allow it.
Miss ANTHONY—Of all my persecutors from the corner grocery politician
who entered the complaint, to the United States marshal, commissioner,
district attorney, district judge, your Honor on the bench, not one is
my peer, but each and all are my political sovereigns . . . . Precisely
as no disfranchised person is entitled to sit upon the jury and no
woman is entitled to the franchise, so none but a regularly admitted
lawyer is allowed to practice in the courts, and no woman can gain
admission to the bar-hence, jury, judge, counsel, all must be of
superior class.
JUDGE HUNT—The Court must insist-the prisoner has been tried according
to the established forms of law.
Miss ANTHONY—Yes, your Honor, but by forms of law, all made by men,
interpreted by men, administered by men, in favor of men and against
women; and hence your Honor’s ordered verdict of guilty, against a
United States citizen for the exercise of the “citizen’s right to
vote,” simply because that citizen was a woman and not a man . . . . As
then the slaves who got their freedom had to take it over or under or
through the unjust forms of the law, precisely so now must women take
it to get their right to a voice in this government; and I have taken
mine, and mean to take it at every opportunity.
JUDGE Hunt—The Court orders the prisoner to sit down. It will not allow
another word.
Miss ANTHONY—When I was brought before your Honor for trial I hoped for
a broad interpretation of the constitution and its recent amendments,
which should declare all United States citizens under its protecting
aegis . . . . But failing to get this justice, failing even to get a
trial by a jury-not of my peers-I ask not leniency at your-hands but
rather the full rigor of the law.
JUDGE HUNT—The Court must insist (here the prisoner sat down). The
prisoner will stand up. (Here Miss Anthony rose again.) The sentence of
the Court is that you pay a fine of $100.00 and the costs of the
prosecution.
Miss ANTHONY—May it please your Honor, I will never pay a dollar of
your unjust penalty . . . . And I shall earnestly and persistently
continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old
Revolutionary maxim, “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.”
JUDGE HUNT—Madam, the Court will not order you stand committed until
the fine is paid.
Miss Anthony did not pay her fine and was never imprisoned. I believe
the fine stands against her to this day.
On the heels of this sensation came another of those dramatic protests
which until the very end she always combined with political agitation.
The nation was celebrating its first centenary of the signing of the
Declaration of Independence at Independence Square, Philadelphia. After
women had been refused by all in authority a humble half moment in
which to present to the Centennial the Women’s Declaration of Rights,
Miss Anthony insisted on being heard. Immediately after the Declaration
of Independence had been read by a patriot, she led a committee of
women, who with platform tickets had slipped through the military,
straight down the center aisle of the platform to address the chairman,
who pale with fright and powerless to stop the demonstration had to
accept her document. Instantly the platform, graced as it was by
national dignitaries and crowned heads, was astir. The women retired,
distributing to the gasping spectators copies of their Declaration.
Miss Anthony had reminded the nation of the hollowness of its
celebration of an independence that excluded women.
Susan B. Anthony’s aim was the national enfranchisement of women. As
soon as she became convinced that the constitution would have to be
specifically amended to include woman suffrage, she set herself to this
gigantic task. For a quarter of a century she appealed to Congress for
action and to party. conventions for suffrage endorsement. When,
however, she saw that Congress was obdurate, as an able and intensely
practical leader she temporarily directed the main energy of the
suffrage movement to trying to win individual states. With women
holding the balance of political power, she argued, the national
government will be compelled to act. She knew so well the value of
power. She went to the West to get it.
She was a shrewd tactician; with prophetic insight, without compromise.
To those women who would yield to party expediency as advised by men,
or be diverted into support of other measures, she made answer in a
spirited letter to Lucy Stone:
“So long as you and I and all women are political slaves, it ill
becomes us to meddle with the weightier discussions of our’ sovereign
masters. It will be quite time enough for us, with self-respect, to
declare ourselves for or against any party upon the intrinsic merit of
its policy, when men shall recognize us as their political equals . . .
.
“If all the suffragists of all the States could see eye to eye on this
point, and stand shoulder to shoulder against every party and
politician not fully and unequivocally committed to ‘Equal Rights for
Women,’ we should become at once the moral balance of power which could
not fail to compel the party of highest intelligence to proclaim woman
suffrage the chief plank of its platform . . . . Until that good day
comes, I shall continue to invoke the party in power, and each party
struggling to get into power, to pledge itself to the emancipation of
our enslaved half of the people . . . .”
She did not live to see enough states grant suffrage in the West to
form a balance of power with which to carry out this policy. She did
not live to turn this power upon an unwilling Congress. But she stood
to the last, despite this temporary change of program, the great
dramatic protagonist of national freedom for women and its achievement
through rebellion and practical strategy.
With the passing of Miss Anthony and her leadership, the movement in
America went conscientiously on endeavoring to pile up state after
state in the “free column.” Gradually her followers lost sight of her
aggressive attack and her objective-the enfranchisement of women by
Congress. They did not sustain her tactical wisdom. This reform
movement, like all others when stretched over a long period of time,
found itself confined in a narrow circle of routine propaganda. It
lacked the power and initiative to extricate itself. Though it had many
eloquent agitators with devoted followings, it lacked generalship.
The movement also lost Miss Anthony’s militant spirit, her keen
appreciation of the fact that the attention of the nation must be
focussed on minority issues by dramatic acts of protest.
Susan B. Anthony’s fundamental objective, her political attitude toward
attaining it, and her militant spirit were revived in suffrage history
in 1913 when Alice Paul, also of Quaker background, entered the
national field as leader of the new suffrage forces in America.
Chapter 2
A Militant General—Alice Paul
Most people conjure up a menacing picture when a person is called not
only a general, but a militant one. In appearance Alice Paul is
anything but menacing. Quiet, almost mouselike, this frail young
Quakeress sits in silence and baffles you with her contradictions.
Large, soft, gray eyes that strike you with a positive impact make you
feel the indescribable force and power behind them. A mass of soft
brown hair, caught easily at the neck, makes the contour of her head
strong and graceful. Tiny, fragile hands that look more like an X-ray
picture of hands, rest in her lap in Quakerish pose. Her whole
atmosphere when she is not in action is one of strength and quiet
determination. In action she is swift, alert, almost panther-like in
her movements. Dressed always in simple frocks, preferably soft shades
of purple, she conforms to an individual style and taste of her own
rather than to the prevailing vogue.
I am going recklessly on to try to tell what I think about Alice Paul.
It is difficult, for when I begin to put it down on paper, I realize
how little we know about this laconic person, and yet how abundantly we
feel her power, her will and her compelling leadership. In an instant
and vivid reaction, I am either congealed or inspired; exhilarated or
depressed; sometimes even exasperated, but always _moved_. I have seen
her very presence in headquarters change in the twinkling of an eye the
mood of fifty people. It is not through their affections that she moves
them, but through a naked force, a vital force which is indefinable but
of which one simply cannot be unaware. Aiming primarily at the
intellect of an audience or an individual, she almost never fails to
win an emotional allegiance.
I shall never forget my first contact with her. I tell it here as an
illustration of what happened to countless women who came in touch with
her to remain under her leadership to the end. I had come to Washington
to take part in the demonstration on the Senate in July, 1913, en route
to a muchneeded, as I thought, holiday in the Adirondacks.
“Can’t you stay on and help us with a hearing next week?” said Miss
Paul.
“I’m sorry,” said I, “but I have promised to join a party of friends in
the mountains for a summer holiday and . . .”
“Holiday?” said she, looking straight at me. Instantly ashamed at
having mentioned such a legitimate excuse, I murmured something about
not having had one since before entering college.
“But can’t you stay?” she said.
I was lost. I knew I would stay. As a matter of fact, I stayed through
the heat of a Washington summer, returned only long enough at the end
of the summer to close up my work in state suffrage and came back to
join the group at Washington. And it was years before I ever mentioned
a holiday again.
Frequently she achieved her end without even a single word Of retort.
Soon after Miss Paul came to Washington in 1913, ;she went to call on a
suffragist in that city to ask her to donate ;some funds toward the
rent of headquarters in the Capital. The woman sighed. “I thought when
Miss Anthony died,” she said, “that all my troubles were at an end. She
used to come to me for money for a federal amendment and I always told
her it was wrong to ask for one, and that besides we would never get
it. But she kept right on coming. Then when she died we didn’t hear any
more about an amendment. And now you come again saying the same things
Miss Anthony said.”
Miss Paul listened, said she was sorry and departed. Very shortly a
check arrived at headquarters to cover a month’s rent.
A model listener, Alice Paul has unlimited capacity for letting the
other person relieve herself of all her objections without contest.
Over and over again I have heard this scene enacted.
“Miss Paul, I have come to tell you that you are all wrong about this
federal amendment business. I don’t believe in it. Suffrage should come
slowly but surely by the states. And although I have been a life-long
suffragist, I just want to tell you not to count on me, for feeling as
I do, I cannot give you any help.”
A silence would follow. Then Miss Paul would say ingenuously, “Have you
a half hour to spare?”
“I guess so,” would come slowly from the protestant. “Why?”
“Won’t you please sit down right here and put the stamps on these
letters? We have to get them in the mail by noon.”
“But I don’t believe …”
“Oh, that’s all right. These letters are going to women probably a lot
of whom feel as you do. But some of them will want to come to the
meeting to hear our side.”
By this time Miss Paul would have brought a chair, and that ended the
argument. The woman would stay and humbly proceed to stick on endless
stamps. Usually she would come back, too, and before many days would be
an ardent worker for the cause against which she thought herself
invincible.
Once the state president of the conservative suffrage forces in Ohio
with whom I had worked the previous year wrote me a letter pointing out
what madness it was to talk of winning the amendment in Congress “this
session,” and adding that “nobody but a fool would ever think of it,
let alone speak of it publicly.” She was wise in politics; we were
nice, eager, young girls, but pretty ignorant—that was the gist of her
remonstrance. My vanity was aroused. Not wishing to be called “mad” or
“foolish” I sat down and answered her in a friendly spirit, with the
sole object of proving that we were wiser than she imagined. I had
never discussed this point with anybody, as I had been in Washington
only a few months and it had never occurred to me that we were not
right to talk of getting the amendment in that particular session. But
I answered my patronizing friend, in effect, that of course we were not
fools, that we knew we would not get the amendment that session, but we
saw no reason for not demanding it at once and taking it when we got
it.
When Miss Paul saw the carbon of that letter she said quietly, pointing
to the part where I had so nobly defended our sagacity, “You must never
say that again and never put it on paper.” Seeing my embarrassment, she
hastened to explain. “You see, we can get it this session if enough
women care sufficiently to demand it now.”
Alice Paul brought back to the fight that note of immediacy which had
gone with the passing of Miss Anthony’s leadership. She called a halt
on further pleading, wheedling, proving, praying. It was as if she had
bidden women stand erect, with confidence in themselves and in their
own judgments, and compelled them to be self-respecting enough to dare
to put their freedom first, and so determine for themselves the day
when they should be free. Those who had a taste of begging under the
old regime and who abandoned it for demanding, know how fine and strong
a thing it is to realize that you must take what is yours and not waste
your energy proving that you are or will some day be worthy of a gift
of power from your masters. On that glad day of discovery you have
first freed yourself to fight for freedom. Alice Paul gave to thousands
of women the essence of freedom.
And there was something so cleansing about the way in which she
renovated ideas and processes, emotions and instincts. Her attack was
so direct, so clear, so simple and unafraid. And her resistance had
such a fine quality of strength.
Sometimes it was a roaring politician who was baffled by this
non-resistant force. I have heard many an irate one come into her
office in the early days to tell her how to run the woman’s campaign,
and struggle in vain to arouse her to combat. Having begun a tirade,
honor would compel him to see it through even without help from a
silent adversary. And so he would get more and more noisy until it
would seem as if one lone shout from him might be enough to blow away
the frail object of his attack. Ultimately he would be forced to
retire, perhaps in the face of a serene smile, beaten and angered that
he had been able to make so little impression. And many the delicious
remark and delightful quip afterward at his expense!
Her gentle humor is of the highest quality. If only her opponents could
have seen her amusement at their hysteria. At the very moment they were
denouncing some plan of action and calling her “fanatical” and
“hysterical” she would fairly beam with delight to see how well her
plan had worked. Her intention had been to arouse them to just that
state of mind, and how admirably they were living up to the plan. The
hysteria was all on their side. She coolly sat back in her chair and
watched their antics under pressure.
“But don’t you know,” would come another thundering one, “that this
will make the Democratic leaders so hostile that . . .”
The looked-for note of surprise never came. She had counted ahead on
all this and knew almost to the last shade the reaction that would
follow from both majority and minority leaders. All this had been
thoroughly gone over, first with herself, then with her colleagues. All
the “alarms” had been rung. The male politician could not understand
why his wellmeaning and generously-offered advice caused not a ripple
and not a change in plan. Such calm unconcern he could not endure. He
was accustomed to emotional panics. He was not accustomed to a leader
who had weighed every objection, every attack and counted the cost
accurately.
Her ability to marshal arguments for keeping her own followers in line
was equally marked. A superficial observer would rush into headquarters
with, “Miss Paul, don’t you think it was a great tactical mistake to
force President Wilson at this time to state his position on the
amendment? Will it not hurt our campaign to have it known that he is
against us?”
“It is the best thing that could possibly happen to us. If he is
against us, women should know it. They will be aroused to greater
action if he is not allowed to remain silent upon something in which he
does not believe. It will make it easier for us to campaign against him
when the time comes.”
And another time a friend of the cause would suggest, “Would it not
have been better not to have tried for planks in party platforms, since
we got such weak ones?”
“Not at all. We can draw the support of women with greater ease from a
party which shows a weak hand on suffrage, than from one which hides
its opposition behind silence.”
She had always to combat the fear of the more timid ones who felt sure
with each new wave of disapproval that we would be submerged. “Now, I
have been a supporter of yours every step of the way,” a “fearful” one
would say, “but this is really going a little too far. I was in the
Senate gallery to-day when two suffrage. senators in speeches denounced
the pickets and their suffrage banners. They said that we were setting
suffrage back and that something ought to be done about it.”
“Exactly so,” would come the ready answer from Miss Paul. “And they
will do something about it only if we continue to make them
uncomfortable enough. Of course even suffrage senators will object to
our pickets and our banners because they do not want attention called
to their failure to compel the Administration to act. They know that as
friends of the measure their responsibility is greater.” And the
“fearful” one was usually convinced and made stronger.
I remember so well when the situation was approaching its final climax
in Washington. Men and women, both, came to Miss Paul with, “This is
terrible! Seven months’ sentence is impossible. You must stop! You
cannot keep this up!”
With an unmistakable note of triumph in her voice Miss Paul would
answer, “Yes, it is terrible for us, but not nearly so terrible as for
the government. The Administration has fired its heaviest gun. From now
on we shall win and they will lose.”
Most of the doubters had by this time banished their fears and had come
to believe with something akin to superstition that she could never be
wrong, so swiftly and surely, did they see her policies and her
predictions on every point vindicated before their eyes.
She has been a master at concentration, a master strategist-a great
general. With passionate beliefs on all important social questions, she
resolutely set herself against being seduced into other paths. Far from
being naturally an ascetic, she has disciplined herself into denials
and deprivations, cultural and recreational, to pursue her objective
with the least possible waste of energy. Not that she did not want
above all else to do this thing. She did. But doing it she had to
abandon the easy life of a scholar and the aristocratic environment of
a cultured, prosperous, Quaker family, of Moorestown, New Jersey, for
the rigors of a ceaseless drudgery and frequent imprisonment. A flaming
idealist, conducting the fight with the sternest kind of realism, a
mind attracted by facts, not fancies, she has led fearlessly and with
magnificent ruthlessness. Thinking, thinking day and night of her
objective and never retarding her pace a moment until its
accomplishment, I know no modern woman leader with whom to compare her.
I think she must possess many of the same qualities that Lenin does,
according to authentic portraits of him-cool, practical, rational,
sitting quietly at a desk and counting the consequences, planning the
next move before the first one is finished. And if she has demanded the
ultimate of her followers, she has given it herself. Her ability to get
women to work and never to let them stop is second only to her own
unprecedented capacity for work.
Alice Paul came to leadership still in her twenties, but with a broad
cultural equipment. Degrees from Swarthmore, the University of
Pennsylvania, and special study abroad in English universities had
given her a scholarly background in history, politics, and sociology.
In these studies she had specialized, writing her doctor’s thesis on
the status of women. She also did factory work in English industries
and there acquired first hand knowledge of the industrial position of
women. In the midst of this work the English militant movement caught
her imagination and she abandoned her studies temporarily to join that
movement and go to prison with the English suffragists.
Convinced that the English women were fighting the battle for the women
of the world, she returned to America fresh from their struggle, to
arouse American women to action. She came bringing her gifts and
concentration to this one struggle. She came with that inestimable
asset, youth, and, born of youth, indomitable courage to carry her
point in spite of scorn and misrepresentation.
Among the thousands of telegrams sent Miss Paul the day the amendment
finally passed Congress was this interesting message from Walter Clark,
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, Southern
Democrat, Confederate Veteran and distinguished jurist:
“Will you permit me to congratulate you upon the great triumph in which
you have been so important a factor? Your place in history is assured.
Some years ago when I first met you I predicted that your name would be
written ‘on the dusty roll the ages keep.’ There were politicians, and
a large degree of public sentiment, which could only be won by the
methods you adopted . . . . It is certain that, but for you, success
would have been delayed for many years to come.”
Part II
Political Action
Chapter 1
Women Invade the Capital
Where are the people?” This was Woodrow Wilson’s first question as he
arrived at the Union Station in Washington the day before his first
inauguration to the Presidency in March, 1913.
“On the Avenue watching the suffragists parade,” came the answer.
The suffrage issue was brought oftenest to his attention from then on
until his final surrender. It lay entirely with him as to how long
women would be obliged to remind him of this issue before he willed to
take a hand.
“The people” were on the Avenue watching the suffragists parade. The
informant was quite right. It seemed to those of us who attempted to
march for our idea that day that the whole world was there—packed
closely on Pennsylvania Avenue.
The purpose of the procession was to dramatize in numbers and beauty
the fact that women wanted to vote—that women were asking the
Administration in power in the national government to speed the day.
What politicians had not been able to get through their minds we would
give them through their eyes—often a powerful substitute. Our first
task seemed simple—actually to show that thousands of women wanted
immediate action on their long delayed enfranchisement. This we did.
This was the first demonstration under the leadership of Alice Paul, at
that time chairman of the Congressional Committee of the National
American Woman. Suffrage Association. It was also the beginning of
Woodrow Wilson’s liberal education.
The Administration, without intending it, played into the hands of the
women from this moment. The women had been given a permit to march.
Inadequate police protection allowed roughs to attack them and all but
break up the beautiful pageant. The fact of ten thousand women marching
with banners and bands for this idea was startling enough to wake up
the government and the country, but not so startling as ten thousand
women man-handled by irresponsible crowds because of police
indifference.
An investigation was demanded and a perfunctory one held. The police
administration was exonerated, but when the storm of protest had
subsided the Chief of Police was quietly retired to private life.
It was no longer a secret that women wanted to vote and that they
wanted the President and Congress to act.
A few days later the first deputation of suffragists ever to appear
before a President to enlist his support for the passage of the
national suffrage amendment waited upon President Wilson.[1] Miss Paul
led the deputation. With her were Mrs. Genevieve Stone, wife of
Congressman Stone of Illinois, Mrs. Harvey W. Wiley, Mrs. Ida Husted
Harper, and Miss Mary Bartlett Dixon of Maryland. The President
received the deputation in the White House Offices. When the women
entered they found five chairs arranged in a row with one chair in
front, like a class- room. All confessed to being frightened when the
President came in and took his seat at the head of the class. The
President said he had no opinion on the subject of woman suffrage; that
he had never given it any thought;[2] and that above all it was his
task to see that Congress concentrated on the currency revision and the
tariff reform. It is recorded that the President was somewhat taken
aback when Miss Paul addressed him during the course of the interview
with this query, “But Mr. President, do you not understand that the
Administration has no right to legislate for currency, tariff, and any
other reform without first getting the consent of women to these
reforms?”
[1] There had been individual visits to previous presidents.
[2] At Colorado Springs in 1911, when Mr. Wilson was Governor of New
Jersey and campaigning for the Presidential nomination, a delegation of
Colorado women asked him his position on woman suffrage. He said,
“Ladies, this is a very arguable question and my mind is in the midst
of the argument.”
“Get the consent of women?” It was evident that this course had not
heretofore occurred to him.
“This subject will receive my most careful consideration,” was
President Wilson’s first suffrage promise.
He was given time to “consider” and a second deputation went to him,
and still a third, asking him to include the suffrage amendment in his
message to the new Congress assembling in extra session the following
month. And still he was obsessed with the paramount considerations of
“tariff” and “currency.” He flatly said there would be no time to
consider suffrage for women. But the “unreasonable” women kept right on
insisting that the liberty of half the American people was paramount to
tariff and currency.
President Wilson’s first session of Congress came together April 7th,
1913. The opening day was marked by the suffragists’ second mass
demonstration. This time women delegates representing every one of the
435 Congressional Districts in the country bore petitions from the
constituencies showing that the people “back home” wanted the amendment
passed. The delegates marched on Congress and were received with a warm
welcome and their petitions presented to Congress. The same day the
amendment which bears the name of Susan B. Anthony, who drafted it in
1875, was reintroduced into both houses of Congress.
The month of May saw monster demonstrations in many cities and villages
throughout the country, with the direct result that in June the Senate
Committee on Suffrage made the first favorable report made by that
committee in twenty-one years, thereby placing it on the Senate
calendar for action.
Not relaxing the pressure for a day we organized the third great
demonstration on the last of July when a monster petition signed by
hundreds of thousands of citizens was brought to the Senate asking that
body to pass the national suffrage amendment. Women from all parts of
the country mobilized in the countryside of Maryland where they were
met with appropriate ceremonies-by the Senate Woman Suffrage Committee.
The delegation motored in gaily decorated automobiles to Washington and
went direct to the Senate, where the entire day was given over to
suffrage discussion.
Twenty-two senators spoke in favor of the amendment in presenting their
petitions. Three spoke against it. For the first time in twenty-six
years suffrage was actually debated in Congress. That day was historic.
Speeches? Yes. Greetings? Yes. Present petitions from their
constituencies? Gladly. Report it from the Senate Committee? They had
to concede that. But passage of the amendment? That was beyond their
contemplation.
More pressure was necessary. We appealed to the women voters, of whom
there were then four million, to come into action.
“Four million women voters are watching you,” we said to Congress. We
might as well have said, “There are in the South Sea Islands four
million heathens.”
It was clear that these distant women voters had no relation in the
senatorial mind to the realism of politics. We decided to bring some of
these women voters to Washington: Having failed to get the Senate to
act by August, we invited the Council of Women Voters to hold its
convention in Washington that Congress might learn this simple lesson:
women did vote; there were four million of them; they had a voters’
organization; they cared about the enfranchisement of all American
women; they wanted the Senate to act; suffrage was no longer a moral
problem; it could be made a practical political problem with which men
and parties would have to reckon.
Voting women made their first impression on Congress that summer.
Meanwhile the President’s “paramount issues”—tariff and currency—had
been disposed of. With the December Congress approaching, he was
preparing another message. We went to him again. This time it was the
women from his own home state, an influential deputation of
seventy-three women, including the suffrage leaders from all suffrage
organizations in New Jersey. The women urged him to include
recommendation of the suffrage resolution in his message to the new
Congress. He replied:
“I am pleased, indeed, to greet you and your adherents here, and I will
say to you that I was talking only yesterday with several members of
Congress in regard to a Suffrage Committee in the House. The subject is
one in which I am deeply interested, and you may rest assured that I
will give it my earnest attention.”
In interesting himself in the formation of a special committee to sit
on suffrage in the House, the President was doing the smallest thing,
to be sure, that could be done, but he was doing something. This was a
distinct advance. It was our task to press on until all the maze of
Congressional machinery had been used to exhaustion. Then there would
be nothing left to do but to pass the amendment.
A fourth time that year the determination of women to secure the
passage of the amendment was demonstrated. In December, the opening
week of the new Congress, the annual convention of the National
American Woman Suffrage Association was held in Washington. Miss Lucy
Burns, vice chairman of its Congressional Committee and also of the
Congressional Union, was applauded to the echo by the whole convention
when she said:
“The National American Woman Suffrage Association is assembled in
Washington to ask the Democratic Party to enfranchise the women of
America.
“Rarely in the history of the country has a party been more powerful
than the Democratic Party is to-day. It controls the Executive Office,
the Senate and more than two-thirds of the members of the House of
Representatives. It is in a position to give us effective and immediate
help.
“We ask the Democrats to take action now. Those who hold power are
responsible to the country for the use of it. They are responsible not
only for what they do, but for what they do not do. Inaction
establishes just as clear a record as does a policy of open hostility.
“We have in our hands to-day not only the weapon of a just cause; we
have the support of ten enfranchised states—states comprising one-fifth
of the United States Senate, one-seventh of the House of
Representatives, and one-sixth of the electoral vote. More than
3,600,000 women have a vote in Presidential elections. It is
unthinkable that a national government which represents women, and
which appeals periodically for the suffrages of women, should ignore
the issue of the right of all women to political freedom.
“We cannot wait until after the passage of scheduled Administration
reforms . . . . Congress is free to take action on our question in the
present session. We ask the Administration to support the woman
suffrage amendment in Congress with its whole strength.”
This represented the attitude of the entire suffrage movement toward
the situation in the winter of 1913. At no time did the militant group
deviate from this position until the amendment was through Congress.
It was difficult to make the Administration believe that the women
meant what they said, and that they meant to use everything in their
power and resourcefulness to see it carried out.
Men were used to having women ask them for suffrage. But they were
disconcerted at being asked for it now; at being threatened with
political chastisement if they did not yield to the demand.
In spite of the repeated requests to President Wilson that he include
support of the measure in his message to Congress, he delivered his
message December end while the convention was still in session, and
failed to make any mention of the suffrage amendment. He recommended
self-government for Filipino men instead.
Immediately Miss Paul organized the entire convention into a fifth
deputation to protest against this failure and to urge support in a
subsequent message. Dr. Anna Howard Shaw led the interview. In reply to
her eloquent appeal for his assistance, the President said in part: “I
am merely the spokesman of my party . . . . I am not at liberty to urge
upon Congress in messages, policies which have not had the organic
consideration of those for whom I am spokesman. I am by my own
principles shut out, in the language of the street, from ‘starting
anything.’ I have to confine myself to those things which have been
embodied as promises to the people at an election.”
I shall never forget that day. Shafts of sunlight came in at the window
and fell full and square upon the white-haired leader who was in the
closing days of her power. Her clear, deep, resonant voice, ringing
with the genuine love of liberty, was in sharp contrast to the halting,
timid, little and technical answer of the President. He stooped to
utter some light pleasantry which he thought would no doubt please the
“ladies.” It did not provoke even a faint smile. Dr. Shaw had
dramatically asked, “Mr. President, if you cannot speak for us and your
party will not, who then, pray, is there to speak for us?”
“You seem very well able to speak for yourselves, ladies,” with a broad
smile, followed by a quick embarrassment when no one stirred.
“We mean, Mr. President, who will speak for us with _authority?_” came
back the hot retort from Dr. Shaw.
The President made no reply. Instead he expressed a desire to shake the
hands of the three hundred delegates. A few felt that manners compelled
them to acquiesce; the others filed out without this little political
ceremony.
Alice Paul’s report to the national convention for her year’s work as
Chairman of the Congressional Committee of the National American Woman
Suffrage Association, and as Chairman also of the Congressional Union
for Woman Suffrage, showed that a budget of twenty-seven thousand
dollars had been raised and expended under her leadership as against
ten dollars spent during the previous year on Congressional work. At
the beginning of the year there was no interest in work with Congress.
It was considered hopeless. At the close of the year 1918 it had become
a practical political issue. Suffrage had entered the national field to
stay.
At this point the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage was obliged to
become an independent body in order to continue this vigorous policy
which the conservative suffrage leaders were unwilling to follow.
Hearings, deputations to the President, petitions to Congress, more
persistent lobbying, all these things continued during the following
year under Miss Paul’s leadership with the result that a vote in the
Senate was taken, though at ran inopportune moment,—the first vote in
the Senate since 1887. The vote stood 86 to ’84-thereby failing by 11
votes of the necessary two-thirds majority. This vote, nevertheless,
indicated that a new strength in the suffrage battle had forced
Congress to take some action.
In the House, the Rules Committee on a vote of 4 to 4 refused to create
a suffrage committee. We appealed to the Democratic caucus to see if
tie party sustained this action. We wished to establish their party
responsibility, one way or another, and by securing the necessary
signatures to a petition, we compelled the caucus to meet. By a vote of
128 to 57 the caucus declared “ . . . that the question of woman
suffrage is a state and not a federal question,” as a substitute for
the milder resolution offered, providing for the creation of a
committee on woman suffrage. If this had left any doubt as to how the
Democratic Party, as a party, stood, this doubt was conveniently
removed by Representative Underwood, the Majority Leader of the House,
when he said on the floor of the House the following day: “The
Democratic Party last night took the distinctive position that it was
not in favor of this legislation because it was in favor of the states
controlling the question of suffrage . . . . I not only said I was
opposed to it, but I said the Party on this side of the Chamber was
opposed to it, and the Party that has control of the legislation in
Congress certainly has the right to say that it will not support a
measure if it is not in accordance with its principles.”
Meanwhile the President had said to a deputation of workingwomen who
waited upon him in February, “Until the Party, as such, has considered
a matter of this very supreme importance, and taken its position, I am
not at liberty to speak for it; and yet I am not at liberty to speak
for it as an individual, for I am not an individual.”
“But we ask you to speak to your party, not for it,” answered Mrs.
Glendower Evans, Chairman of the deputation, amid evident presidential
embarrassment.
Those women who had been inclined perhaps to accept the President’s
words as true to fact, entertained doubts when a .few days later he
demanded of his party in Congress the repeal of the free tolls
provision in the Panama Canal tolls act. In so doing, he not only
recommended action not endorsed by his party, but he demanded action
which his party had specifically declared against.
It was necessary to appeal again to the nation. We called for
demonstrations. of public approval of the amendment in every state on
May 2. Thousands of resolutions were passed calling for action in
Congress. These resolutions were made the center of another great
demonstration in Washington, May 9, when thousands of women in,
procession carried them to the Capitol where beautiful and impressive
ceremonies were held on the Capitol steps. The resolutions were
formally received by members of Congress and the demonstration ended
dramatically with a great chorus of women massed on the steps singing
“The March of the Women” to the thousands of spectators packed closely
together on the Capitol grounds.
And still the President withheld his support.
Under our auspices five hundred representative club women of the
country waited upon him in another appeal for help.[1] To them he
explained his “passion for local self-government,” which led to his
conviction “that this is a matter for settlement by the states[2] and
not by the federal government . . . .”
Women had to face the fact that the 63rd Congress had made a distinctly
hostile record on suffrage. The President, as leader of his party, had
seven times refused all aid; the Democratic Party had recorded its
opposition through an adverse vote in the Senate and a caucus vote in
the House forbidding even consideration of the measure.
It became clear that some form of political action would have to be
adopted which would act as an accelerator to the Administration. This
feeling was growing momentarily among many women, but it was
conspicuously strong in the mind of Mrs. Oliver H. P. Belmont,
recognized as one of the ablest suffrage leaders in the country.
Anticipating the unfriendly record made by the Democrats in the 63rd
Congress, Mrs. Belmont had come to Miss Paul and to her vice-chairman,
Miss Lucy Burns, to urge the formulation of a plan whereby we could
strike at Administration opposition through the women voters of the
West. Miss Paul had the same idea and welcomed the support of this plan
by so able a leader.
[1] 7th deputation to the President, June 30, 1914.
[2] This amounted to virtual opposition because of the great
difficulties, (some of them almost insuperable) involved in amending
many state constitutions.
Mrs. Belmont was impatient to do nationally what she had already
inaugurated in New York State suffrage work—make suffrage an election
issue. She was the first suffragist in America to be “militant” enough
to wage a campaign against office-seekers on the issue of woman
suffrage. She was roundly denounced by the opposition press, but she
held her ground. It is interesting to record that she defeated the
first candidate for the New York Assembly ever campaigned against on
this issue.
She had associated herself with the Pankhursts in England and was the
first suffrage leader here publicly to commend the tactics of the
English militants. Through her, Mrs. Pankhurst made her first visits to
America, where she found a sympathetic audience. Even among the people
who understood and believed in English tactics, the general idea here
was that only in the backward country of England was “militancy”
necessary. In America, men would give women what women wanted without a
struggle.
Mrs. Belmont was the one suffrage leader who foresaw a militant battle
here whenever women should determine to ask for their freedom
immediately. In a great measure she prepared the way for that battle.
Since the movement had not even advanced to the stage of political
action at that time, however, Mrs. Belmont realized that political
action would have to be exhausted before attempting more aggressive
tactics. Not knowing whether Miss Paul had contemplated inaugurating
political action in the national field, she sought out the new leader
and urged her to begin at, once to organize the women’s power for use
in the approaching national elections.
Those interested in the woman’s movement are fairly familiar with Mrs.
Belmont’s early state suffrage work and her work with the militants in
England, but they do not know as much about her national work. It is
not easy for a woman of vast wealth to be credited with much else in
America than the fact of generosity in giving money to the cause in
which she believes. Wealth dazzles us and we look no further. Mrs.
Belmont has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to suffrage, both
state and national, but she has given greater gifts in her militant
spirit, her political sagacity and a marked tactical sense. She was
practically the only leader formerly associated with the conservative
forces who had the courage to extricate herself from the old routine
propaganda and adventure into new paths. She always approached the
struggle for liberty in a wholesome revolutionary mood. She was
essentially a leader, and one who believed in action-always action.
Until the movement in America regained its militant spirit, her heart
was primarily with the English women, because she thought their fight
so magnificent that it would bring suffrage to women in England sooner
than our slow-going methods would bring it to us. In 1910, when English
militancy was at its height, Mrs. Belmont gave out an interview in
London, in which she predicted that English women would have the
suffrage before us. She even went so far as to say that we in America
would have to create an acute situation here, probably a form of
militancy, before we could win. At the same time the President of the
International Suffrage Alliance said in London: “The suffrage movement
in England- resembles a battle. It is cruel and tragic. Ours in America
is an evolution-less dramatic, slow but more sure.” Facts sustained
Mrs. Belmont’s prophecy. Facts did not sustain the other prediction.
English women got the vote in 1918. American women were not
enfranchised nationally until August, 1920.
The following is the political theory and program approved by Mrs.
Belmont and submitted to the Congressional Union, by its chairman,
Alice Paul, at a conference of the organization at the home of Mrs.
Belmont in Newport in August, 1914:
The dominant party (at that time the Democratic Party) is responsible
for all action and therefore for action on suffrage.
This party’s action had been hostile to this measure.
The dominant party in the approaching election must be convinced, and
through it all other parties, that opposition to suffrage is
inexpedient.
All parties will be convinced when they see that their opposition costs
them votes.
Our fight is a political one.
We must appeal for support to the constituency which is most friendly
to suffrage, that constituency being the voting women.
An attempt must be made, no matter how small, to organize the women’s
vote.
An appeal must be made to the women voters in the nine suffrage states
to withhold their support from the Democrats nationally, until the
national Democratic Party ceases to block the suffrage amendment.
This is non-partisanship in the highest degree, as it calls upon women
to forego previous allegiance to a party. If they are Democrats in this
instance, they must vote against their party. If the Republican Party
were in power and pursued a similar course, we would work against that
party.
The party which sees votes falling away will change its attitude.
After we have once affected by this means the outcome of a national
election, even though slightly, every party will hesitate to trifle
with our measure any longer.
All candidates from suffrage states are professing suffragists, and
therefore we have nothing to lose by defeating a member of the dominant
party in those states. Another suffragist will take his place.
Men will object to being opposed because of their party responsibility
in spite of their friendliness individually to suffrage. But women
certainly have a right to further through the ballot their wishes on
the suffrage question, as well as on other questions like currency,
tariff, and what not.
This can only be done by considering the Party record, for as the
individual record and individual pledges go, all candidates are
practically equal.
We, as a disfranchised class, consider our right to vote, preeminently
over any other issue in any party’s program.
Political leaders will resent our injecting our issue into their
campaign, but the rank and file will be won when they see the loyalty
of women to women.
This policy will be called militant and in a sense it is, being strong,
positive and energetic.
If it is militant to appeal to women to use their vote to bring
suffrage to this country, then it is militant to appeal to men or women
to use their vote to any good end.
To the question of “How will we profit if another party comes in?” our
answer will be that adequate political chastisement of one party for
its bad suffrage record through a demonstration of power by women
voters affecting the result of the national election, will make it
easier to get action from any party in power
Amidst tremendous enthusiasm this plan was accepted by the little
conference of women at Newport, and $7,000 pledged in a few moments to
start it. There was a small group of women, an infinitely small budget
with which to wage a campaign in nine states, but here was also
enthusiasm and resolute determination.
A tiny handful of women-never more than two, more often only one to a
state—journeyed forth from Washington into the nine suffrage states of
the West to put before the voting women this political theory, and to
ask them to support it.
Chapter 2
Women Voters Organize
It can’t be done.” “Women don’t care about suffrage.” I “Once they’ve
got it, it is a dead issue.” “To talk of arousing the Western women to
protest against the Congressional candidates of the National Democratic
Party in the suffrage states, when every one of them is a professing
suffragist, is utter folly.” So ran the comment of the political wise
acres in the autumn of 1914.
But the women had faith in their appeal.
It is impossible to give in a few words any adequate picture of the
anger of Democratic leaders at our entrance into the campaign. Six
weeks before election they woke up to find the issue of national
suffrage injected into a campaign which they had meant should be no
more stirring than an orderly and perfunctory endorsement of the
President’s legislative program.
The campaign became a very hot one during which most of the militancy
seemed to be on the side of the political leaders. Heavy fists came
down on desks. Harsh words were spoken. Violent threats were made. In
Colorado, where I was cam- paigning, I was invited politely but firmly
by the Democratic leader to leave the state the morning after I had
arrived. “You can do no good here. I would advise you to leave at once.
Besides, your plan is impracticable and the women will not support it.”
“Then why do you object to my being here?” I asked.
“You have no right to ask women to do this . . . .”
Some slight variation of this experience was met by every woman who
took part in this campaign. Of course, the Democratic leaders did not
welcome an issue raised unexpectedly, and one which forced them to
spend an endless amount of time apologizing for and explaining the
Democratic Party’s record. Nor did they relish spending more money
publishing more literature, in short, adding greatly to the burdens of
their campaign. The candidates, a little more suave than the party
leaders, proved most eloquently that they had been suffragists “from
birth.” One candidate even claimed a suffrage inheritance from his
great-grandmother.
This first entry of women into a national election on the suffrage
amendment was little more than a quick, brilliant dash. With all its
sketchiness, however, it had immediate political results, and when the
election was over, there came tardily a general public recognition that
the Congressional Union had made a real contribution to these results.
In the nine suffrage states women vote3 for 45 members of Congress. For
43 of these seats the Democratic Party ran candidates. We opposed in
our campaign all of these candidates. Out of the 43 Democratic
candidates running, only 9.0 were elected. While it was not our primary
aim to defeat candidates it was generally conceded that we had
contributed to these defeats.
Our aim in this campaign was primarily to call to the attention of the
public the bad suffrage record of the Democratic Party. The effect of
our campaign was soon evident in Congress. The most backward member
realized for the first time that women had voted. Even the President
perceived that the movement had gained new strength, though he was not
yet politically moved by it. He was still “tied to a conviction”[1]
which he had had all his life that suffrage “ought to be brought about
state by state.”
[1] Statement to Deputation of Democratic women (eighth deputation) at
the White House, Jan. 6, 1915.
Enough strength and determination among women had been demonstrated to
the Administration, however, to make them want to do something “just as
good” as the thing we asked. The Shafroth-Palmer[1] Resolution was
introduced, providing for a constitutional amendment permitting a
national initiative and referendum on suffrage in the states, thereby
forcing upon women the very course we had sought to circumvent. This
red herring drawn across the path had been accepted by the conservative
suff- ragists evidently in a moment of hopelessness, and their strength
put behind it, but the politicians who persuade them to back it knew
that it was merely an attempt to evade the issue.
[1] This resolution was introduced in the Senate by Senator Shafroth of
Colorado, Democrat; in the House by Representative A. Mitchell Palmer
of Pennsylvania, Democrat, later Attorney General in President Wilson’s
Cabinet. Both men, although avowed supporters of the original Susan B.
Anthony amendment, backed this evil compromise.
This made necessary a tremendous campaign throughout the country by the
Congressional Union, with the result that the compromise measure was
eventually abandoned. During its life, however, politicians were happy
in the opportunity to divide their support between it and the original
amendment, which was still pending. To offset this danger and to show
again in dramatic fashion the strength and will of the women voters to
act on this issue, we made political work among the western women the
principal effort of the year 1915, the year preceding the presidential
election. Taking advantage of the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San
Francisco, we opened suffrage headquarters in the Palace of Education
on the exposition grounds. From there we called the first Woman Voters’
Convention ever held in the world for the single purpose of attaching
political strength to the movement. Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont was chairman
of the committee which signed the convention call.
Women from all the voting states assembled in a mass convention
September 14, 15 and 16. There is not time to describe the beauty of
the pageantry which surrounded that gathering, nor of the emotional
quality which was at high pitch throughout the sessions. These women
from the deserts of Arizona, from the farms of Oregon, from the valleys
of California, from the mountains of Nevada and Utah, were in deadly
earnest. They had answered the call and they meant to stay in the fight
until it was won. The convention went on record unanimously for further
political action on behalf of national suffrage and for the original
amendment without compromise, and pledged itself to use all power to
this end without regard to the interests of any existing political
party.
Two emissaries, Sara Bard Field and Frances Joliffe, both of
California, were commissioned by women voters at the final session,
when more than ten thousand people were present, to go to the President
and Congress bearing these resolutions and hundreds of thousands of
signatures upon a petition gathered during the summer. They would speak
directly to the President lest he should be inclined to take lightly
the women voters’ resolutions.
The envoys, symbolic of the new strength that was to come out of the
West, made their journey across continent by automobile. They created a
sensation all along the way, received as they were by governors, by
mayors, by officials high and low, and by the populace. Thousands more
added their names to the petition and it was rolled up to gigantic
proportions until in December when unrolled it literally stretched over
miles as it was borne to the Capitol with honor escorts.
The action of the convention scarcely cold, and the envoys mid- way
across the continent, the President hastened to New Jersey to cast his
vote for suffrage in a state referendum. He was careful to state that
he did so as a private citizen, “not as the leader of my party in the
nation” He repeated his position, putting the emphasis upon his
opposition to national suffrage, rather than on his belief in suffrage
for his state. “I believe that it (suffrage) should be settled by the
states and not by the national government, and that in no circumstances
should it be made a party question; and my view has grown stronger at
every turn of the agitation.” He knew women were asking the powerful
aid of the President of the United States, not the aid of Mr. Wilson of
Princeton, New Jersey. The state amendment in New Jersey was certain to
fail, as President Wilson well knew. Casting a vote for it would help
his case with women voters, and still not bring suffrage in the East a
step nearer.
The envoys’ reception at the Capitol was indeed dramatic. Thousands of
women escorted them amid bands and banners to the halls of Congress,
where they were received by senators and representatives and addressed
with eloquent speeches. The envoys replied by asking that their message
be carried by friends of the measure to the floor of the Senate and
House, and this was done.
The envoys waited upon the President at the White House. This visit of
the representatives of women with power marked rather an advance in the
President’s position. He listened with an eager attention to the story
of the new-found power and what women meant to do with it. For the
first time on record, he said he had “an open mind” on the question of
national suffrage, and would confer with his party colleagues.
The Republican and Democratic National Committees heard the case of the
envoys. They were given a hearing before the Senate Suffrage Committee
and before the House Judiciary in one of the most lively and
entertaining inquisitions in which women ever participated.
No more questions on mother and home! No swan song on the passing of
charm and womanly loveliness! Only agile scrambling by each committee
member to ask with eagerness and some heat, “Well, if this amendment
has not passed Congress by then, what will you do in the elections of
1916?” It was with difficulty that the women were allowed to tell their
story, so eager was the Committee to jump ahead to political
consequences. “Sirs, that depends upon what you gentlemen do. We are
asking a simple thing——” But they never got any further from the main
base of their interest.
“If President Wilson comes out for it and his party does not” from a
Republican member, “will you——”
“I object to introducing partisan discussions here,” came shamelessly
from a Democratic colleague. And so the hearing passed in something of
a verbal riot, but with no doubt as to the fact that Congressmen were
alarmed by the prospect of women voting as a protest group.
The new year found the Senate promptly reporting the measure favorably
again, but the Judiciary Committee footballed it to its sub-committee,
back to the whole committee, postponed it, marked time, dodged defeated
it.
The problem of neutrality toward the European war was agitating the
minds of political leaders. Nothing like suffrage for women must be
allowed to rock the ship even slightly! Oh, no, indeed; it was men’s
business to keep the nation out of war. Men never had shown marked
skill at keeping nations out of war in the history of the world. But
never mind! Logic must not be pressed too hard upon the “reasoning”
sex. This time, men would do it.
The exciting national election contest was approaching. Party
conventions were scheduled to meet in June while the amendment
languished at the Capitol. It was clear that more highly organized
woman-power would have to be called into action before the national
government would speed its pace. To the women voters the Eastern women
went for decisive assistance. A car known as the “Suffrage Special,”
carrying distinguished Eastern women and gifted speakers, made an
extensive tour of the West and under the banner of the Congressional
Union called again upon the women voters to come to Chicago on June 5th
to form a new party,—The Woman’s Party[1]—to serve as long as should be
necessary as the balance of power in national contests, and thus to
force action from the old parties.
[1] The Woman’s Party started with a membership of all Congressional
Union members in suffrage states. Anne Martin of Nevada was elected
chairman.
The instant response which met this appeal surpassed the most
optimistic hopes. Thousands of women assembled in Chicago for this
convention, which became epoch-making not only in .the suffrage fight
but in the whole woman movement. For the first time in history, women
came together to organize their political power into a party to free
their own sex. For the first time in history representatives of men’s
political parties came to plead before these women voters for the
support of their respective parties.
The Republican Party sent as its representatives John Hays Hammond and
C. S. Osborn, formerly Governor of Michigan. The Democrats sent their
most persuasive orator, President Wilson’s friend, Dudley Field Malone,
Collector of the Port of New York. Allan Benson, candidate for the
Presidency on the Socialist ticket, represented the Socialist Party.
Edward Polling, Prohibition leader, spoke for the Prohibition Party,
arid Victor Murdock and Gifford Pinchot for The Progressive Party.
All laid their claims for suffrage support before the women with the
result that the convention resolved itself into another political
party—The Woman’s Party. A new party with but one plank—the immediate
passage of the federal suffrage amendment—a party determined to
withhold its support from all existing parties until women were
politically free, and to punish politically any party in power which
did not use its power to free women; a party which became a potent
factor of protest in the following national election.
This first step towards the solidarity of women quickly brought
results. The Republican National Convention, meeting immediately. after
the Woman’s Party Convention, and the Democratic National Convention
the week following, both included suffrage planks in their national
platforms for the first time in history. To be sure, they were planks
that failed to satisfy us. But the mere hint of organized political
action on suffrage had moved the two dominant parties to advance a
step. The new Woman’s Party had declared suffrage a national political
issue. The two major parties acknowledged the issue by writing it into
their party platforms.
The Republican platform was vague and indefinite on national suffrage.
The Democratic Party made its suffrage plank specific against action by
Congress. It precisely said, “We recommend the extension of the
franchise to the women of the country by the states upon the same terms
as men.” It was openly stated at the Democratic Convention by leading
Administration Democrats that the President himself had written this
suffrage plank. If the Republicans could afford to write a vague and
indefinite plank, the President and his party could not. They as the
party in power had been under fire and were forced to take sides. They
did so. The President chose the plank and his subordinates followed his
lead. It may be remarked in passing that this declaration so solidified
the opposition within the President’s party that when the President
ultimately sought to repudiate it, he met stubborn resistance.
Protected by the President’s plank, the Democratic Congress continued
to block national suffrage. It would not permit it even to be reported
from the Judiciary Committee. The party platform was written. The
President, too, found it easy to hide behind the plank which he had
himself written, counting on women to be satisfied. To Mrs. D. E.
Hooker of Richmond, Virginia, who as a delegate from the Virginia
Federation of Labor, representing 60,000 members, went to him soon
after to ask his support of the amendment, the President said, “I am
opposed by conviction and political traditions to federal action on
this question. Moreover, after the plank which was adopted in the
Democratic platform at St. Louis, I could not comply with the request
contained in this resolution even if I wished to do so.”
President Wilson could not act because the party plank which he had
written prevented him from doing so!
Meanwhile the women continued to protest.
Miss Mabel Vernon of Delaware, beloved and gifted crusader, was the
first member of the Woman’s Party to commit a “militant” act. President
Wilson, speaking at the dedication services of the Labor Temple in
Washington, was declaring his interest in all classes and all
struggles. He was proclaiming his beliefs in the abstractions of
liberty and justice, when Miss Vernon, who was seated on the platform
from which he was speaking, said in her powerful voice, “Mr. President,
if you sincerely desire to forward the interests of all the people, why
do you oppose the national enfranchisement of, women?” Instant
consternation arose, but the idea had penetrated to the farthest corner
of the huge assembly that women were protesting to the President
against the denial of their liberty.
The President found time to answer, “That is one of the things which we
will have to take counsel over later,” and resumed his speech. Miss
Vernon repeated her question later and was ordered from the meeting by
the police.
As the summer wore on, women realized that they would have to enter the
national contest in the autumn. Attention was focussed on the two rival
presidential candidates, Woodrow Wilson and Charles Evans Hughes, the
Republican nominee, upon whom the new Woman’s Party worked diligently
for prompt statements of their position on the national amendment.
The next political result of the new solidarity of women was Mr.
Hughes’ declaration on August 1st, 1916: “My view is that the proposed
amendment should be submitted and ratified and the subject removed from
political discussion.”
The Democratic Congress adjourned without even report ing the measure
to that body for a vote, and went forthwith to the country to ask
reelection.
We also went to the country. We went to the women voters to lay before
them again the Democratic Party’s record—now complete through one
Administration. We asked women voters again to withhold their support
nationally from President Wilson and his party.
The President accepted at once the opportunity to speak before a
convention of suffragists at Atlantic City in an effort to prove his
great belief in suffrage. He said poetically, “The tide is rising to
meet the moon . . . . You can afford to wait” Whatever we may have
thought of his figure of speech, we disagreed with his conclusion.
The campaign on, Democratic speakers throughout the West found an
unexpected organized force among women, demanding an explanation of the
past conduct of the Democratic Party and insisting on an immediate
declaration by the President in favor of the amendment. Democratic
orators did their utmost to meet this opposition. “Give the President
time. He can’t do everything at once.” “Trust him once more; he will do
it for you next term.” “He kept us out of war. He is the best friend
the mothers of the nation ever had” “He stood by you. Now you women
stand by him.” “What good will votes do you if the Germans come over
here and take your country?” And so on. Enticing doctrine to women—the
peace lovers of the human race.
Although we entered this contest with more strength than we had had in
1914, with a budget five times as large and with piled-up evidence of
Democratic hostility, we could rot have entered a more difficult
contest. The people were excited to an almost unprecedented pitch over
the issue of peace versus war. In spite of the difficulty of competing
with this emotional issue which meant the immediate disposal of
millions of lives, it was soon evident that the two issues were running
almost neck and neck in the Western territory.
No less skilled a campaigner than William Jennings Bryan took the stump
in the West against the Woman’s Party. At least a third of each speech
was devoted to suffrage. He urged. He exhorted. He apologized. He
explained. He pleaded. He condemned. Often he was heckled. Often he saw
huge “VOTE AGAINST WILSON! HE KEPT US OUT OF SUFFRAGE!” banners at the
doors of his meetings. One woman in Arizona, who, unable longer to
listen in patience to the glory of “a democracy where only were
governed those who consented,” interrupted him. He coldly answered,
“Madam, you cannot pick cherries before they are ripe.” By the time he
got to. California, however, the cherries had ripened considerably, for
Mr. Bryan came out publicly for the national amendment.
What was true of Mr. Bryan was true of practically every Democratic
campaigner. Against their wills they were forced to talk about
suffrage, although they had serenely announced at the opening of the
campaign that it was “not an issue in this campaign.” Some merely
apologized and explained. Others, like Dudley Field Malone, spoke for
the federal amendment, and promised to work to put it through the next
Congress, “if only you women will stand by Wilson and return him to
power.”
Space will not permit in this book to give more than a hint of the
scope and strength of our campaign. If it were possible to give a
glimpse of the speeches made by men in that campaign, you would agree
that it was not peace alone that was the dominant issue, but peace and
suffrage. It must be made perfectly clear that the Woman’s Party did
not attempt to elect Mr. Hughes. It did not feel strong enough to back
a candidate in its first battle, and did not conduct its fight
affirmatively at all. No speeches were made for Mr. Hughes and the
Republican Party. The appeal was to vote a vote of protest against Mr.
Wilson and his Congressional candidates, because he and his party had
had the power to pass the amendment through Congress and had refused to
do so. That left the women free to choose from among the Republicans,
Socialists and Prohibitionists. It was to be expected that the main
strength of the vote taken from Mr. Wilson would go to Mr. Hughes, as
few women perhaps threw their votes to the minority parties. But just
as the Progressive Party’s protest had been effective in securing
progressive legislation without winning the election, so the Woman’s
Party hoped its protest would bring results in Congress without
attempting to win the election.
History will never know in round numbers how many women voted against
the President and his party at this crisis, for there are no records
kept for men and women separately, except in one state, in Illinois.
The women there voted two to one against Mr. Wilson and for Mr. Hughes.
Men outnumber women throughout the entire western territory; in some
states, two and three to one; in Nevada, still higher. But, whereas, in
the election of 191, President Wilson got 69 electoral votes from the
suffrage states, in the 1916 election, when the whole West was aflame
for him because of his peace policy, he got only 57. Enthusiasm for Mr.
Hughes in the West was not sufficiently marked to account entirely for
the loss of these 12 electoral votes. Our claim that Democratic
opposition to suffrage had cost many of them was never seriously
denied.
The Democratic Judiciary Committee of the House which had refused to
report suffrage to the House for a vote, had only one Democratic member
from a suffrage state, Mr. Taggart of Kansas, standing for reelection.
This was the only spot where women could strike out against the action
of this committee—and Mr. Taggart. They struck with success. He was
defeated almost wholly by the women’s votes.
With a modest campaign fund of slightly over fifty thousand dollars,
raised almost entirely in small sums, the women had forced the campaign
committee of the Democratic Party to assume the defensive and to
practically double expenditure and work on this issue. As much
literature was used on suffrage as on peace in the suffrage states.
Many Democrats although hostile to our campaign said without
qualification that the Woman’s Party protest was the only factor in the
campaign which stemmed the western tide toward Wilson, and which
finally made California the pivotal state and left his election in
doubt for a week.
Again, with more force, national suffrage had been injected into a
campaign where it was not wanted, where the leaders had hoped the
single issue of “peace” would hold the center of the stage. Again many
women had stood together on this issue and put woman suffrage first.
And the actual reelection of President Wilson had its point of
advantage, too, for it enabled us to continue the education of a man in
power who had already had four years of lively training on the woman
question.
Chapter 3
The Last Deputation to President Wilson
Of the hundreds of women who volunteered for the last Western campaign,
perhaps the most effective in their appeal were the disfranchised
Eastern women.
The most dramatic figure of them all was Inez Milholland Boissevain,
the gallant and beloved crusader who gave her life that the day of
women’s freedom might be hastened. Her last words to the nation as she
fell fainting on the platform in California were, “Mr. President, how
long must women wait for liberty?” Her fiery challenge was never heard
again. She never recovered from the terrific strain of the campaign
which had undermined her young strength. Her death touched the heart of
the nation; her sacrifice, made so generously for liberty, lighted anew
the fire of rebellion in women, and aroused from inertia thousands
never before interested in the liberation of their own sex.
Memorial meetings were held throughout the country at which women not
only paid radiant tribute to Inez Milholland, but reconsecrated
themselves to the struggle and called again upon the reelected
President and his Congress to act.
The most impressive of these memorials was held on Christmas Day in
Washington. In Statuary Hall under the dome of the Capitol—the scene of
memorial services for Lincoln and Garfield—filled with statues of
outstanding figures in the struggle for political and religious liberty
in this country, the first memorial service ever held in the Capitol to
honor a woman, was held for this gallant young leader.
Boy choristers singing the magnificent hymn
“Forward through the darkness
Leave behind the night,
Forward out of error,
Forward into light”
led into the hall the procession of young girl banner-bearers. Garbed
in simple surplices, carrying their crusading banners high above their
heads, these comrades of Inez Milholland Boissevain seemed more
triumphant than sad. They seemed to typify the spirit in which she gave
her life.
Still other young girls in white held great golden banners flanking the
laurel-covered dais, from which could be read the inscriptions:
“Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his
friend” . . . “Without extinction is liberty; Without retrograde is
equality” . . . “As He died to make men holy let us die to make men
free” . . .
From behind the heavy velvet curtains came the music of voices and
strings, and the great organ sounded its tragic and triumphant tones.
Miss Maud Younger of California was chosen to make the memorial address
on this occasion. She said in part:
“We are here to pay tribute to Inez Milholland Boissevain, who was our
comrade. We are here in the nation’s capital, the seat of our
democracy, to pay tribute to one who gave up her life to realize that
democracy . . . .
“Inez Milholland walked down the path of life a radiant being. She went
into work with a song in her heart. She went into battle with a laugh
on her lips. Obstacles inspired her, discouragement urged her on. She
loved work and she loved battle. She loved life and laughter and light,
and above all else she loved liberty. With a loveliness beyond most, a
kindliness, a beauty of mind and soul, she typified always the best and
noblest in womanhood. She was the flaming torch that went ahead to
light the way—the symbol of light and freedom . . .
“Symbol of the woman’s struggle, it was she who carried to the West the
appeal of the unenfranchised, and carrying it, made her last appeal on
earth, her last journey in life.
“As she set out upon her last journey, she seems to have had the
clearer vision, the spiritual quality of one who has already set out
for another world. With infinite understanding and intense faith in her
mission, she was as one inspired. Her meetings were described as
‘revival meetings,’ her audiences as ‘wild with enthusiasm.’ Thousands
acclaimed her, thousands were turned away unable to enter . . .
“And she made her message very plain.
“She stood for no man, no party. She stood only for woman. And standing
thus she urged:
“‘It is women for women now and shall be until the fight is won!
Together we shall stand shoulder to shoulder for the greatest principle
the world has-ever known, the right of self-government.
“‘Whatever the party that has ignored the claims of women we as women
must refuse to uphold it. We must refuse to uphold any party until all
women are free.
“‘We have nothing but our spirits to rely on and the vitality of our
faith, but spirit is invincible.
“‘It is only for a little while. Soon the fight will be over. Victory
is in sight.’
“Though she did not live to see that victory, it is sweet to know that
she lived to see her faith in women justified. In one of her last
letters she wrote:
“‘Not only did we reckon accurately on women’s loyalty to women, but we
likewise realized that our appeal touched a certain spiritual,
idealistic quality in the western woman voter, a quality which is
yearning to find expression in political life. At the idealism of the
Woman’s Party her whole nature flames into enthusiasm and her response
is immediate. She gladly transforms a narrow partisan loyalty into
loyalty to a principle, the establishment of which carries with it no
personal advantage to its advocate, but merely the satisfaction of
achieving one more step toward the emancipation of mankind . . . . We
are bound to win. There never has been a fight yet where interest was
pitted against principle that principle did not triumph!’
“ . . The trip was fraught with hardship. Speaking day and night, she
would take a train at two in the morning to arrive at eight; then a
train at midnight to arrive at five in the morning. Yet she would not
change the program; she would not leave anything out . . .
“And so . . . her life went out in glory in the shining cause of
freedom.
“And as she had lived loving liberty, working for liberty, fighting for
liberty, so it was that with this word on her lips she fell. ‘How long
must women wait for liberty?’ she cried and fell-as surely as any
soldier upon the field of honor—as truly as any who ever gave up his
life for an ideal.
“As in life she had been the symbol of the woman’s cause so in death
she is the symbol of its sacrifice. The whole daily sacrifice, the
pouring out of life and strength that is the toll of woman’s prolonged
struggle.
“Inez Milholland is one around whom legends will grow up. Generations
to come will point out Mount Inez and tell of the beautiful woman who
sleeps her last sleep on its slopes.
“They will tell of her in the West, tell of the vision of loveliness as
she flashed through on her last burning mission, flashed through to her
death—a falling star in the western heavens.
“But neither legend nor vision is liberty, which was her life. Liberty
cannot die. No work for liberty can be lost. It lives on in the hearts
of the people, in their hopes, their aspira- tions, their activities.
It becomes part of the life of the nation. What Inez Milholland has
given to the world lives on forever.
“We are here to-day to pay tribute to Inez Milholland Boissevain, who
was our comrade. Let our tribute be not words which pass, nor song
which flies, nor flower which fades. Let it be this: that we finish the
task she could not finish; that with new strength we take up the
struggle in which fighting beside us she fell; that with new faith we
here consecrate ourselves to the cause of woman’s freedom until that
cause is won; that with new devotion we go forth, inspired by her
sacrifice, to the end that her sacrifice be not in vain, for dying she
shall bring to pass that which living she could not achieve—full
freedom for women, full democracy for the nation.
“Let this be our tribute, imperishable, to Inez Milholland Boissevain.”
Miss Anne Martin of Nevada, chairman of the Woman’s Party, presided
over the services. Other speakers were Honorable George Sutherland,
United States Senator from Utah, representing the United States
Congress; and Honorable Rowland S. Mahany, former member of Congress
and lifelong friend of the Milholland family.
Mrs. William Kent of California, wife of Representative Kent, presented
two resolutions which the vast audience approved by silently rising.
One resolution, a tribute of rare beauty, prepared by Zona Gale, a
friend of Inez Milholland, was a compelling appeal to all women to
understand and to reverence the ideals of this inspiring leader. The
other was an appeal to the Administration for action.
The pageantry of surpliced choristers and the long line of girl
standard-bearers retired to the strains of the solemn recessional. The
great audience sat still with bowed heads as the voices in the distance
dropped in silence. Instantly the strains of the Marseillaise, filling
the great dome with its stirring and martial song of hope, were taken
up by the organ and the strings, and the audience was lifted to its
feet singing as if in anticipation of the triumph of liberty.
The women were in no mood merely to mourn the loss of a comrade-
leader. The government must be shown again its share of responsibility.
Another appeal must be made to the President who, growing steadily in
control over the people and over his Congress, was the one leader
powerful enough to direct his party to accept this reform. But he was
busy gathering his power to lead them elsewhere. Again we would have to
compete with pro-war anti-war sentiment. But it was no time to relax.
Following the holiday season a deputation of over three hundred women
carried to the White House the Christmas Day memorial for Inez
Milholland and other memorials from similar services. The President was
brought face to face with the new protest of women against the
continued waste of physical and spiritual energy in their battle. There
is no better way to picture the protest than to give you something
verbatim from the speeches made that memorable day. This was the first
meeting of suffragists with the President since the campaign against
him in the previous autumn. It was only because of the peculiar
character of the appeal that he consented to hear them.
Miss Younger presented the national memorial to him and introduced Mrs.
John Winters Brannan, who made no plea to the President but merely gave
him the New York memorial which read as follows:
“This gathering of men and women, assembled on New Year’s day in New
York to hold a memorial service in honor of Inez Milholland Boissevain,
appeals to you, the President of the United States, to end the
outpouring of life and effort that has been made for the
enfranchisement of women for more than seventy years in this country.
The death of this lovely and brave women symbolizes the whole daily
sacrifice that vast numbers of women have made and are making for the
sake of political freedom. It has made vivid the ‘constant unnoticed
tragedy of, this prolonged effort for a freedom that is acknowledged
just, but still denied.’
“It is not given to all to be put to the supreme test and to accept
that test with such gallant gladness as she did. The struggle, however,
has reached the point where it requires such intensity of
effort—relentless and sustained—over the whole vast country, that the
health of thousands of noble women is being insidiously undermined. If
this continues, and it will continue until victory is won, we know only
too surely that many women whom the nation can ill spare will follow in
the footsteps of Inez Milholland.
“We desire to make known to you, Mr. President, our deep sense of wrong
being inflicted upon women in making them spend their health and
strength and forcing them to abandon other work that means fuller
self-expression, in order to win freedom under a government that
professes to believe in democracy.
“There is only one cause for which it is right to risk health and life.
No price is too high to pay for liberty. So long as lives of women are
required, these lives will be given.
“But we beg of you, Mr. President, so to act that this ghastly price
will not have to be paid. Certainly it is a grim irony that a Republic
should exact it. Upon you at this moment rests a solemn responsibility;
for with you it rests to decide whether the life of this brilliant,
dearly-loved woman whose glorious death we commemorate to-day, shall be
the last sacrifice of fife demanded of American women in their struggle
for self-government.
“We ask you with all the fervor and earnestness of our souls to exert
your power over Congress in behalf of the national enfranchisement of
women in the same way you have so successfully used it on other
occasions and for far less important measures.
“We are confident that if the President of the United States decides
that this act of justice shall be done in the present session of
Congress, it will be done. We know further that if the President does
not urge it, it will not be done. . . “
A fraction of a moment of silence follows, but it is long enough to
feel strongly the emotional state of mind of the President. It plainly
irritates him to be so plainly spoken to. We are conscious that his
distant poise on entering is dwindling to petty confusion. There is
something inordinately cool about the fervor of the women. This too
irritates him. His irritation only serves to awaken in every woman new
strength. It is a wonderful experience to feel strength take possession
of your being in a contest of ideas. No amount of trappings, no amount
of authority, no number of plainclothes men, nor the glamour of the
gold-braided attaches, nor the vastness of the great reception hall,
nor the dazzle of the lighted crystal chandeliers, and above all not
the mind of your opponent can cut in on your slim, hard strength. You
are more than invincible. Your mind leaps ahead to the infinite liberty
of which yours is only a small part. You feel his strength in
authority, his weakness in vision. He does not follow. He feels sorrow
for us. He patronizes us. He must temper his irritation at our
undoubted fanaticism and unreason. We, on the other hand, feel so
superior to him. Our strength to demand is so much greater than his
power to withhold. But he does not perceive this.
In the midst of these currents the serene and appealing voice of Sara
Bard Field came as a temporary relief to the President—but only
temporary. Shy brought tears to the eyes of the women as she said in
presenting the California memorial resolutions:
“Mr. President, a year ago I had the honor of calling upon you with a
similar deputation. At that time we brought from my western country a
great petition from the voting women urging your assistance in the
passage of the federal amendment for suffrage. At that time you were
most gracious to us. You showed yourself to be in line with all the
progressive leaders by your statement to us that you could change your
mind and would consider doing so in connection with this amendment. We
went away that day with hope in our hearts, but neither the hope
inspired by your friendly words nor the faith we had in you as an
advocate of democracy kept us from working day and night in the
interest of our cause.
“Since that day when we came to you, Mr. President, one of our most
beautiful and beloved comrades, Inez Milholland, has paid the price of
her life for this cause. The untimely death of a young woman like
this—a woman for whom the world has such bitter need—has focussed the
attention of the men and women of the nation on the fearful waste of
women which this fight for the ballot is entailing. The same maternal
instinct for the preservation of life—whether it be the physical life
of a child or the spiritual life of a cause—is sending women into this
battle for liberty with an urge which gives them no rest night or day.
Every advance of liberty has demanded its quota of human sacrifice, but
if I had time I could show you that we have paid in a measure that is
running over. In the light of Inez Milholland’s death, as we look over
the long backward trail through which we have sought our political
liberty, we are asking how long must this struggle go on.
“Mr. President, to the nation more than to women alone is this waste of
maternal force significant. In industry such a waste of money and
strength would not be permitted. The modern trend is all toward
efficiency. Why is such waste permitted in the making of a nation?
“Sometimes I think it must be very hard to be a President, in respect
to his contacts with people as well as in the great business he must
perform. The exclusiveness necessary to a great dignitary holds him
away from that democracy of communion, necessary to a full
understanding of what the people .are really thinking and desiring. I
feel that this deputation to-day fails in its mission if, because of
the dignity of your office and the formality of such an occasion, we
fail to bring you the throb of woman’s desire for freedom and her
eagerness to ally herself when once the ballot is in her hand, with all
those activities to which you, yourself, have dedicated your life.
Those tasks which this nation has set itself to do are her tasks as
well as man’s. We women who are here to-day are close to this desire of
women. We cannot believe that you are our enemy or indifferent to the
fundamental righteousness of our demand.
“We have come here to you in your powerful office as our helper. We
have come in the name of justice, in the name of democracy, in the name
of all women who have fought and died for this cause, and in a peculiar
way with our hearts bowed in sorrow, in the name of this gallant girl
who died with the word ‘liberty’ on her lips. We have come asking you
this day to speak some favorable word to us that we may know that you
will use your good and great office to end this wasteful struggle of
women.”
The highest point in the interview had been reached. Before the
President began his reply, we were aware that the high moment had gone.
But we listened.
“Ladies, I had not been apprised that you were coming here to make any
representations that would issue an appeal to me. I had been told that
you were coming to present memorial resolutions with regard to the very
remarkable woman whom your cause has lost. I, therefore, am not
prepared to say anything further than I have said on previous occasions
of this sort.
“I do not need to tell you where my own convictions and my own personal
purpose lie, and I need not tell you by what circumscriptions I am
bound as leader of a party. As the leader of a party my commands come
from that party and not from private personal convictions.
“My personal action as a citizen, of course, comes from no source but
my own conviction. and, therefore, my position has been so frequently
defined, and I hope so candidly defined, and it is so impossible for me
until the orders of my party are changed, to do anything other than I
am doing as a party leader, that I think nothing more is necessary to
be said.
“I do want to say this: I do not see how anybody can fail to observe
from the utterances of the last campaign that the Democratic Party is
more inclined than the opposition to assist in this great cause, and it
has been a matter of surprise to me, and a matter of very great regret
that so many of those who were heart and soul for this cause seemed so
greatly to misunderstand arid misinterpret the attitude of parties. In
this country, as in every other self-governing country, it is really
through the instrumentality of parties that things can be accomplished.
They are not accomplished by the individual voice but by concerted
action, and that action must come only so fast as you can concert it. I
have done my best and shall continue to do my best to concert it in the
interest of a cause in which I personally believe.”
Dead silence. The President stands for a brief instant at the end of
his words as if waiting for some faint stir of approval which does not
come. He has the baffled air of a dis- appointed actor who has failed
to “get across.” Then he turns abruptly on his heel and the great doors
swallow him up. Silently the women file through the corridor and into
the fresh air.
The women returned to the spacious headquarters across the park all of
one mind. How little the President knew about women! How he
underestimated their intelligence and penetration of things political,!
Was it possible that he really thought these earnest champions of
liberty would merely carry resolutions of sorrow and regret to the
President?
But this was not the real irony. How lightly he had shifted the
responsibility for getting results to his party. With what coldness he
had bade us “concert opinion,” a thing which he alone could do. That
was pretty hard to bear, coming as it did when countless forms of
appeal had been exhausted by which women without sufficient power could
“concert” anything. The movement was almost at the point of languishing
so universal was the belief in the nation that suffrage for women was
inevitable. And yet he and his party remained immovable.
The three hundred women of the memorial deputation became on their
return to headquarters a spirited protest meeting.
Plans of action in the event the President refused to help had been
under consideration by Miss Paul and her executive committee for some
time, but they were now presented for the first time for approval.
There was never a more dramatic moment at which to ask the women if
they were ready for drastic action.
Harriot Stanton Blatch, daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and a
powerful leader of women, voiced the feeling of the entire body when
she said, in a ringing call for action:
“We have gone to Congress, we have gone to the President during the
last four years with great deputations, with small deputations. We have
shown the interest all over the country in self-government for
women—something that the President as a great Democrat ought to
understand and respond to instantly. Yet he tells us to-day that we
must win his party. He said it was strange that we did not see before
election that his party was more favorable to us than the Republican
party. How did it show its favor? How did he show his favor today to
us? He says we have got to convert his party . . . Why? Never before
did the Democratic Party lie more in the hands of one man than it lies
to-day in the hands of President Wilson. Never did the Democratic Party
have a greater leader, and never was it more susceptible to the wish of
that leader, than is the Democratic Party of to-day to President
Wilson. He controls his party, and I don’t think he is too modest to
know it. He can mould it as he wishes and he has moulded it. He moulded
it quickly before election in the matter of the eight-hour law. Was
that in his party platform? He had to crush and force his party to pass
that measure. Yet he is not willing to lay a finger’s weight on his
party to-day for half the people of the United States . . . . Yet
to-day he tells us that we must wait more—and more.
“We can’t organize bigger and more influential deputations. We can’t
organize bigger processions. We can’t, women, do anything more in that
line. We have got to take a new departure. We have got to keep the
question before him all the time. We have got to begin and begin
immediately.
“Women, it rests with us. We have got to bring to the President,
individually, day by day, week in and week out, the idea that great
numbers of women want to be free, wall be free, and want to know what
he is going to do about it.
“Won’t you come and join us in standing day after day at the gates of
the White House with banners asking, ‘What will you do, Mr. President,
for one-half the people of this nation?’ Stand there as
sentinels—sentinels of liberty, sentinels of self-government—silent
sentinels. Let us stand beside the gateway where he must pass in and
out, so that he can never fail to realize that there is a tremendous
earnestness and insistence back of this measure. Will you not show your
allegiance today to this ideal of liberty? Will you not be a silent
sentinel of liberty and self-government?”
Deliberations continued. Details were settled. Three thousand dollars
was raised in a few minutes among these women, fresh from the
President’s rebuff. No one suggested waiting until the next
Presidential campaign. No one even mentioned the fact that time was
precious, and we could wait no longer. Every one seemed to feel these
things without troubling to put them into words. Volunteers signed up
for sentinel duty and the fight was on.
Part III
Militancy
“I will write a song for the President, full of menacing signs,
And back of it all, millions of discontented eyes.”
WALT WHITMAN
Chapter 1
Picketing a President
When all suffrage controversy has died away it will be the little army
of women with their purple, white and gold banners, going to prison for
their political freedom, that will be remembered. They dramatized to
victory the long suffrage fight in America. The challenge of the picket
line roused the government out of its half-century sleep of
indifference. It stirred the country to hot controversy. It made
zealous friends and violent enemies. It produced the sharply-drawn
contest which forced the surrender of the government in the second
Administration of President Wilson.
The day following the memorial deputation to the President, January
10th, 1917, the first line of sentinels, a dozen in number, appeared
for duty at the White House gates. In retrospect it must seem to the
most inflexible person a reasonably mild and gentle thing to have done.
But at the same time it caused a profound stir. Columns of front page
space in all the newspapers of the country gave more or less
dispassionate accounts of the main facts. Women carrying banners were
standing quietly at the White House gates “picketing” the President;
women wanted President Wilson to put his power behind the suffrage
amendment in Congress. That did not seem so shocking and only a few
editors broke out into hot condemnation.
When, however, the women went back on the picket line the next day and
the next and the next, it began to dawn upon the excited press that
such persistence was “undesirable” . . . “unwomanly” …“dangerous.”
Gradually the people most hostile to the idea of suffrage in any form
marshaled forth the fears which accompany every departure from the
prescribed path. Partisan Democrats frowned. Partisan Republicans
chuckled. The rest remained in cautious silence to see how “others”
would take it. Following the refrain of the press, the protest-chorus
grew louder.
“Silly women” . . . “unsexed” . . .” pathological” . . . “They must be
crazy” . . . “Don’t they know anything about politics?” . . . “What can
Wilson do? He does not have to sign the constitutional amendment.” . .
. So ran the comment from the wise elderly gentlemen sitting buried in
their cushioned chairs at the gentlemen’s club across the Park,
watching eagerly the “shocking,” “shameless” women at the gates of the
White House. No wonder these gentlemen found the pickets irritating!
This absorbing topic of conversation, we are told, shattered many an
otherwise quiet afternoon and broke up many a quiet game. Here were
American women before their very eyes daring to shock them into having
to think about liberty. And what was worse—liberty for women. Ah well,
this could not go on,—this insult to the President. They could with
impunity condemn him and gossip about his affairs. But that women
should stand at his gates asking for liberty—that was a sin without
mitigation.
Disapproval was not confined merely to the gentlemen in their Club. I
merely mention them as an example, for they were our neighbors, and the
strain on them day by day, as our beautiful banners floated gaily out
from our headquarters was, I am told, a heavy one.
Yet, of course, we enjoyed irritating them. Standing on the icy
pavement on a damp, wintry day in the penetrating cold of a Washington
winter, knowing that within a stone’s throw of our agony there was a
greater agony than ours—there was a joy in that!
There were faint rumblings also in Congress, but like so many of its
feelings they were confined largely to the cloak rooms. Representative
Emerson of Ohio did demand from the floor of the House that the
“suffrage guard be withdrawn, as it is an insult to the President,” but
his protest met with no response whatever from the other members. His
oratory fell on indifferent ears. And of course there were always those
in Congress who got a vicarious thrill watching women do in their fight
what they themselves had not the courage to do in their own. Another
representative, an anti-suffrage Democrat, inconsiderately called us
“Iron-jawed angels,” and hoped we would retire. But if by these
protests these congressmen hoped to arouse their colleagues, they
failed.
We were standing at the gates of the White House because the American
Congress had become so supine that it could not or would not act
without being compelled to act by the President. They knew that if they
howled at us it would only afford an opportunity to retort—“Very well
then, if you do not like us at the gates of your leader; if you do not
want us to ‘insult’ the President, end this agitation by taking the
matter into your own hands and passing the amendment.” Such a sug-
gestion would be almost as severe a shock as our picketing. The thought
of actually initiating legislation left a loyal Demo- cratic follower
transfixed.
The heavy dignity of the Senate forbade their meddling much in this
controversy over tactics. Also they were more interested in the
sporting prospect of our going into the world war. There was no appeal
to blood-lust in the women’s fight. There were no shining rods of
steel. There was no martial music. We were not pledging precious lives
and vast billions in our crusade for liberty. The beginning of our
fight did indeed seem tiny and frail by the side of the big game of
war, and so the senators were at first scarcely aware of our presence.
But the intrepid women stood their long vigils, day by day, at the
White House gates, through biting wind and driving rain, through sleet
and snow as well as sunshine, waiting for the President to act. Above
all the challenges of their banners rang this simple, but insistent
one:
Mr. President
How Long Must Women Wait for Liberty?
The royal blaze of purple, white and gold-the Party’s tricolored
banners—made a gorgeous spot of color against the bare, blacklimbed
trees.
There were all kinds of pickets and so there were all kinds of
reactions to the experience of picketing. The beautiful lady, who drove
up in her limousine to do a twenty minute turn on the line, found it
thrilling, no doubt. The winter tourist who had read about the pickets
in her home paper thought it would be “so exciting” to hold a banner
for a few minutes. But there were no illusions in the hearts of the
women who stood at their posts day in and day out. None of them will
tell you that they felt exalted, ennobled, exhilarated, possessed of
any rare and exotic emotion. They were human beings before they were
pickets. Their reactions were those of any human beings called upon to
set their teeth doggedly and hang on to an unpleasant job.
“When will that woman come to relieve me? I have stood here an hour and
a half and my feet are like blocks of ice,” was a more frequent comment
from picket to picket than “Isn’t it glorious to stand here defiantly
no matter what the stupid people say about us?”
“I remember the thousand and one engaging things that would come to my
mind on the picket line. It seemed that anything but standing at a
President’s gate would be more diverting. But there we stood.
And what were the reflections of a President as he saw the indomitable
little army at his gates? We can only venture to say from events which
happened. At first he seemed amused and interested. Perhaps he thought
it a trifling incident staged by a minority of the extreme “left” among
suffragists and anticipated no popular support for it. When he saw
their persistence through a cruel winnter his sympathy was touched. He
ordered the guards to invite them in for a cup of hot coffee, which
they declined. He raised his hat to them as he drove through the line.
Sometimes he smiled. As yet he was not irritated. He was fortified in
his national power.
With the country’s entrance into the war and his immediate elevation to
world leadership, the pickets began to be a serious thorn in his flesh.
His own statements of faith in democracy and the necessity for
establishing it .throughout the world left him open to attack. His
refusal to pay the just bill owed the women and demanded by them
brought irritation.
What would you do if you owed a just bill and every day some one stood
outside your gates as a quiet reminder to the whole world that you had
not paid it?
You would object. You would get terribly irritated. You would call the
insistent one all kinds of harsh names. You might even arrest him. But
the scandal would be out.
Rightly or wrongly, your sincerity would be touched; faith in you would
be shaken a bit. Perhaps even against your will you would yield.
But you would yield. And that was the one important fact to the women.
This daily sight, inspiring, gallant and impressive, escaped no visitor
to the national capital. Distinguished visitors from the far corners of
the earth passed by the pickets on those days which made history.
Thousands read the compelling messages on the banners, and literally
hundreds of thousands learned the story, when the visitors got “back
home.”
Real displeasure over the sentinels by those who passed was negligible.
There was some mirth and joking, but the vast majority were filled with
admiration, either silent or expressed.
“Keep it up.” . . . “You are on the right track.” . . .
“Congratulations.” . . . “I certainly admire your pluck—stick to it and
you will get it.” . . . This last from a military officer . . . . “It
is an outrage that you women should have to stand here and beg for your
rights. We gave it to our women in Australia long ago:” . . . This from
a charming gentleman who bowed approvingly.
Often a lifted hat was held in sincere reverence over the heart as some
courteous gentleman passed along the picket line. Of course there were
some who came to try to argue with the pickets; who attempted to
dissuade them from their persistent course. But the serene, good humor
and even temper of the women would not allow heated arguments to break
in on the military precision of their line. If a question was asked, a
picket would answer quietly. An occasional sneer was easy to meet. That
required no acknowledgment.
A sweet old veteran of the Civil War said to one of my comrades: “Yous
all right; you gotta fight for your rights in this world, and now that
we are about to plunge into another war, I want to tell you women
there’ll be no end to it unless you women get power. We can’t save
ourselves and we need you . . . . I am 84 years old, and I have watched
this fight since I was a young man. Anything I can do to help, I want
to do. I am living at the Old Soldiers’ Home and I ain’t got mach
money, but here’s something for your campaign. It’s all I got, and God
bless you, you’ve gotta win.” He spoke the last sentence almost with
desperation as he shoved a crumpled $2.00 bill into her hand. His
spirit made it a precious gift.
Cabinet members passed and repassed. Congressmen by the hundreds came
and went. Administration leaders tried to conceal under an. artificial
indifference their sensitiveness to our strategy.
And domestic battles were going on inside the homes throughout the
country, for women were coming from every state in the Union, to take
their place on the line. For the first time good “suffrage-husbands”
were made uncomfortable. Had they not always believed in suffrage? Had
they not always been uncomplaining when their wife’s time was given to
suffrage campaigning? Had they not, in short, been good sports about
the whole thing? There was only one answer. They had. But it had been
proved that all the things that women had done and all the things in
which their menfolk had cooperated, were not enough. Women were called
upon for more intensive action. “You cannot go to Washington and risk
your health standing in front of the White House. I cannot have it.”
“But the time has come when we have to take risks of health or anything
else.”
“Well, then, if you must know, I don’t believe in it. Now I am a
reasonable man and I have stood by you all the way up to now, but I
object to this. It isn’t ladylike, and it will do the cause more harm
than good. You women lay yourselves open to ridicule.”
“That’s just it—that’s a fine beginning. As soon as men get tired
laughing at us, they will do something more about it. They won’t find
our campaign so amusing before long.”
“But I protest. You’ve no right to go without considering me.”
“But if your country called you in a fight for democracy, as it is
likely to do at any moment, you’d go, wouldn’t you?”
“Why, of course.”
“Of course you would. You would go to the front and leave me to
struggle on as best I could without you. That is the way you would
respond to your country’s call, whether it was a righteous cause or
not. Well, I am going to the front too. I am going to answer the
women’s call to fight for democracy. I would be ashamed of myself if I
were not willing to join my comrades. I am sorry that you object, but
if you will just put yourself in my place you will see that I cannot do
otherwise.”
It must be recorded that there were exceptional men of sensitive
imaginations who urged women against their own hesitancy. They are the
handful who gave women a hope that they would not always have to
struggle alone for their liberation. And women passed by the daily
picket line as spectators, not as participants. Occasionally a woman
came forward to remonstrate, but more often women were either too shy
to advance or so enthusiastic that nothing could restrain them. The
more kind-hearted of them, inspired by the dauntless pickets in the
midst of a now freezing temperature, brought mittens, fur pieces,
golashes, wool -lined raincoats: hot bricks to stand on, coffee in
thermos bottles and what not.
Meanwhile the pickets became a household word in Washington, and very
soon were the subject of animated conversation in practically every
corner of the nation. The Press cartoonists, by their friendly and
satirical comments, helped a great deal in popularizing the campaign.
In spite of the bitter editorial comment of most of the press, the
humor of the situation had an almost universal appeal.
At the Washington dinner of the Gridiron Club, probably the best known
press club in the world,—a dinner at which President Wilson was a
guest,—one of the songs sung for his benefit was as follows:
“We’re camping to-night on the White House grounds
Give us a rousing cheer;
Our golden flag we hold aloft, of cops we have no fear.
Many of the pickets are weary to-night,
Wishing for the war to cease; many are the chilblains and frost- bites
too;
It is no life of ease.
Camping to-night, camping to-night,
Camping on the White House grounds.”
The White House police on duty at the gates came to treat the picketers
as comrades.
“I was kinds worried,” confessed one burly officer when the pickets
were five minutes late one day. “We thought perhaps you weren’t coming
and we world have to hold down this place alone.”
The bitter-enders among the opponents of suffrage broke into such
violent criticism that they won new friends to the amendment.
People who had never before thought of suffrage for women had to think
of it, if only to the extent of objecting to the way in which we asked
for it. People who had thought a little about suffrage were compelled
to think more about it. People who had believed in suffrage all their
lives, but had never done a, stroke of work for it, began to make
speeches about it, if only for the purpose of condemning us.
Some politicians who had voted for it when there were not enough votes
to carry the measure loudly threatened to commit political suicide by
withdrawing their support. But it was easy to see at a glance that they
would not dare to run so great a political risk on an issue growing
daily more important.
As soon as the regular picket line began to be accepted as a matter of
course, we undertook to touch it up a bit to sustain public interest.
State days were inaugurated, beginning with Maryland. The other states
took up the idea with enthusiasm. There was a College Day, when women
representing 15 American colleges stood on the line; a Teachers’ Day,
which found the long line represented by almost every state in the
Union, and a Patriotic Day, when American flags mingled with the
party’s banners carried by representatives of the Women’s Reserve
Corps, Daughters of the Revolution and other patriotic organizations.
And there were professional days when women doctors, lawyers and nurses
joined the picket appeal.
Lincoln’s birthday anniversary saw another new feature. A long line of
women took out banners bearing the slogans:
LINCOLN STOOD FOR WOMAN SUFFRAGE 60 YEARS AGO.
MR. PRESIDENT, WHY DO YOU BLOCK THE NATIONAL SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT TO-DAY?
WHY ARE YOU BEHIND LINCOLN?
and another:
AFTER THE CIVIL WAR, WOMEN ASKED FOR POLITICAL FREEDOM. THEY WERE TOLD
TO WAIT—THIS WAS THE NEGRO’S HOUR. IN 1917 AMERICAN WOMEN STILL ASK FOR
FREEDOM.
WILL YOU, MR. PRESIDENT, TELL THEM TO WAIT-THAT THIS IS THE PORTO
RICANS HOUR?[1]
[1] President Wilson had just advocated self-government for Porto Rican
men.
A huge labor demonstration on the picket line late in February brought
women wage earners from office and factory throughout the Eastern
States.
A special Susan B. Anthony Day on the anniversary of the birth of that
great pioneer, served to remind. the President who said, “You can
afford to wait,” that the women had been waiting and fighting for this
legislation to pass Congress since the year 1878.
More than one person came forward to speak with true religious fervor
of the memory of the great Susan B. Anthony. Her name is never
mentioned nor her words quoted without finding such a response.
In the face of heavy snow and rain, dozens of young women stood in
line, holding special banners made for this occasion. Thousands of men
and women streaming home from work in the early evening read words of
hers spoken during the Civil War, so completely applicable to the
policy of the young banner- bearers at the gates.
WE PRESS OUR DEMAND FOR THE BALLOT AT THIS TIME IN NO NARROW, CAPIOUS
OR SELFISH SPIRIT, BUT FROM PUREST PATRIOTISM FOR THE HIGHEST GOOD OF
EVERY CITIZEN, FOR THE SAFETY OF THE REPUBLIC AND A3 A GLORIOUS EXAMPLE
TO THE NATIONS OF THE EARTH.
AT THIS TIME OUR GREATEST NEED IS NOT MEN O$ MONEY, VALIANT GENERALS OR
BRILLIANT VICTORIES, BUT A CONSISTENT NATIONAL POLICY BASED UPON THE
PRINCIPLE THAT ALL GOVERNMENTS DERIVE THEIR JUST POWERS FROM THE
CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED.
THE RIGHT OF SELF-GOVERNMENT FOR ONE-HALF OF ITS PEOPLE IS OF FAR MORE
VITAL CONSEQUENCE TO THE NATION THAN ANY OR ALL OTHER QUESTIONS.
During the reunion week of the Daughters and Veterans of the
Confederacy, the picket line was the center of attraction for the
sight-seeing veterans and their families. For the first time in history
the troops of the Confederacy had crossed the Potomac and taken
possession of the capital city. The streets were lined with often
tottering but still gallant old men, whitehaired and stooped, wearing
their faded badges on their gray uniforms, and carrying their tattered
flags.
It seemed to the young women on picket duty during those days that not
a single veteran had failed to pay his respects to the pickets. They
came and came; and some brought back their wives to show them the guard
at the gates.
One old soldier with tears in his dim eyes came to say, “I’ve done
sentinel duty in my time. I know what it is . . . And now it’s your
turn. You young folks have the strength and the courage to keep it up .
. . . You are going to put it through!”
One sweet old Alabamian came shyly up to one of the pickets and said,
“I say, Miss, this is the White House, isn’t it?”
Before she could answer, he added: “We went three times around the
place and I told the boys, the big white house in the center was the
White House, but they wasn’t believing me and I wasn’t sure, but as
soon as I saw you girls coming with your flags, to stand here, I said,
‘This must be the White House. This is sure enough where the President
lives; here are the pickets with their banners that we read about down
home.’’ A note of triumph was in his frail voice.
The picket smiled, and thanked him warmly, as he finished with, “You
are brave girls. You are bound to get him”—pointing his shaking finger
toward the White House.
President Wilson’s second inauguration was rapidly approaching. Also
war clouds were gathering with all the increased emotionalism that
comes at such a crisis. Some additional demonstration of power and
force must be made before the President’s inauguration and before the
excitement of our entry into the war should plunge our agitation into
obscurity. This was the strategic moment to assemble our forces in
convention in Washington.
Accordingly, the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage and the Woman’s
Party, that section of the Congressional Union in suffrage states made
up of women voters, convened in Washington and decided unanimously to
unite their strength, money and political power in one organization,
and called it the National Woman’s Party.
The following officers were unanimously elected to direct the
activities of the new organization: Chairman of the National Woman’s
Party, Miss Alice Paul, New Jersey; Vice-chairman, Miss Anne Martin,
Nevada; secretary, Miss Mabel Vernon, Nevada; treasurer, Miss Gertrude
Crocker, Illinois; executive members, Miss Lucy Burns, Mrs. O. H. P.
Belmont, Mrs. John Winters Brannan, New York; Mrs. Gilson Gardner,
Illinois; Mrs. Robert Baker, Washington, D. C.; Mrs. William Kent and
Miss Maud Younger, California; Mrs. Florence Bayard Hilles, Delaware;
Mrs. Donald Hooker, Maryland; Mrs. J. A. H. Hopkins, New Jersey; Mrs.
Lawrence Lewis, Pennsylvania, and Miss Doris Stevens, Nebraska.
The convention came to a close on the eve of inauguration, culminating
in the dramatic picket line made up of one thousand delegates who
sought an interview with the President. The purpose of the interview
was to carry to him the resolutions of the convention, and further
plead with him to open his second administration with a promise to back
the amendment.
In our optimism we hoped that this glorified picket-pageant might form
a climax to our three months of picketing. The President admired
persistence. He said so. He also said he appreciated the rare tenacity
shown by our women. Surely “now” he would be convinced! No more
worrying persistence would be needed ! The combined political strength
of the western women and the financial strength of the eastern women
would surely command his respect and entitle us to a hearing.
What actually happened?
It was a day of high wind and stinging, icy rain, that March 4th, 1917,
when a thousand women, each bearing a banner, struggled against the
gale to keep their banners erect. It is always impressive to see a
thousand people march, but the impression was imperishable when these
thousand women marched in rain-soaked garments, hands bare, gloves
roughly torn by the sticky varnish from the banner poles and the
streams of water running down the poles into the palms of their hands.
It was a sight to impress even the most hardened spectator who had seen
all the various forms of the suffrage agitation in Washington. For more
than two hours the women circled the White House—the rain never ceasing
for an instant—hoping to the last moment that at least their leaders
would be allowed to take in to the President the resolutions which they
were carrying.
Long before the appointed hour for the march to start, thousands of
spectators sheltered by umbrellas and raincoats lined the streets to
watch the procession. Two bands whose men managed to continue their
spirited music in spite of the driving rain led the march playing
“Forward Be Our Watchword”; “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”; “Onward
Christian Soldiers”; “The Pilgrim’s Chorus” from Tannhäuser; “The
Coronation March” from Le Prophète, the Russian Hymn and “The
Marsellaise”
Miss Vida Milholland led the procession carrying her sister’s last
words, “Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?” She was
followed by Miss Beulah Amidon of North Dakota, who carried the banner
that the beloved Inez Milholland carried in her first suffrage
procession in New York. The long line of women fell in behind.
Most extraordinary precautions had been taken about the White House.
Everything had been done except the important thing. There were almost
as many police officers as marchers. The Washington force had been
augmented by a Baltimore contingent and squads of plainclothes men. On
every fifty feet of curb around the entire White House grounds there
was a policeman., About the same distance apart on the inside of the
tall picket-fence which surrounds the grounds were as many more.
We proceeded to the main gate. Locked! I was marshalling at the head of
the line and so heard first hand what passed between the leaders and
the guards. Miss Anne, Martin addressed the guard—
“We have come to present some important resolutions to the President of
the United States.”
“I have orders to keep the gates locked, Ma’am.”
“But there must be some mistake. Surely the President does not mean to
refuse to see at least . . .”
“Those are my only orders, Ma’am.”
The procession continued on to the second gate on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Again locked. Before we could address the somewhat nervous policeman
who stood at the gates, he hastened to say, “You can’t come in here;
the gates are locked.”
“But it is imperative; we are a thousand women from all States in the
Union who have come all the way to Washington to see the President and
lay before him . . .”
“No orders, Ma’am.”
The line made its way to the third and last gate—the gate leading to
the Executive offices. As we came up to this gate a small army of
grinning clerks and secretaries manned the windows of the Executive
offices, evidently amused at the sight of the women struggling in the
wind and rain to keep their banners intact. Miss Martin, Mrs. William
Kent of California, Mrs. Florence Bayard Hilles of Delaware, Miss Mary
Patterson of Ohio, niece of John C. Patterson of Dayton, Mrs. J. A. H.
Hopkins of New Jersey, Miss Eleanor Barker of Indiana, and Mrs. Mary
Darrow Weible of North Dakota,—the leaders—stayed at the gate,
determined to get results from the guard, while the women continued to
circle the White House.
“Will you not carry a message to the President’s Secretary asking him
to tell the President that we are here waiting to see him?”
“Can’t do that, Ma’am.”
“Will you then take our cards to the Secretary to the president, merely
announcing to him that we are here, so that he may send somebody to
carry in our resolutions?”
Still the guard hesitated. Finally he left the gate and carried the
message a distance of a few rods into the Executive offices. He had
scarcely got inside when he rushed back to his post. When we sought to
ascertain what had happened to the cards—had they been given and what
the answer was—he quietly confided to us that he had been reprimanded
for even attempting to bring them in and informed us that the cards
were still in his pocket. “I have orders to answer no questions and to
carry no messages. If you have anything to leave here you might take it
to the entrance below the Executive offices, and-when I go off my beat
at six o’clock I will leave it as I go by the White House.”
We examined this last entrance suggested. It, did not strike us as the
proper place to leave an important message for the President.
“What is this entrance used for?” I asked the guard.
“It’s all right, lady. If you’ve got something you’d like to leave,
leave it with me. It will be safe.”
I retorted that we were not seeking safety for our message, but speed
in delivery.
The guard continued: “This is the gate where Mrs. Wilson’s clothes and
other packages are left.”
It struck us as scarcely fitting that we should leave our resolutions
amongst “Mrs. Wilson’s clothes and other packages,” so we returned to
the last locked gate to ask the guard if he had any message in the
meantime for us. He shook his head regretfully.
Meanwhile the women marched and marched, and the rain fell harder and
as the afternoon wore on the cold seemed almost unendurable.
The white-haired grandmothers in the procession—there were some as old
as 84—were as energetic as the young girls of 20. What was this
immediate hardship compared to eternal subjection! Women marched and
waited—waited and marched, under the sting of the biting elements and
under the worse sting of the indignities heaped upon them. It was
impossible to believe that in democratic America they could not see the
President to lay before him their grievance.
It was only when they saw the Presidential limousine, in the late
afternoon, roll luxuriously out of the grounds, and through the gates
down Pennsylvania Avenue, that the weary marchers realized that
President Wilson had deliberately turned them away unheard!
The car for an instant, as it came through the gates, divided the
banner-bearers on march. President and Mrs. Wilson looked straight
ahead as if the long line of purple, white and gold were invisible.
All the women who took part in that march will tell you what was
burning in their hearts on that dreary day. Even if reasons had been
offered—and they were not—genuine reasons why the President could not
see them, it would not have cooled the women’s heat. Their passionate
resentment went deeper than any reason could possibly have gone.
This one single incident probably did more than any other to make women
sacrifice themselves. Even something as thin as diplomacy on the part
of President Wilson might have saved him many restless hours to follow,
but he did not take the trouble to exercise even that.
The women returned to headquarters and there wrote a letter which was
dispatched with the resolutions to President Wilson. In a letter to the
National Woman’s Party, acknowledging the receipt of them, he concluded
by saying: “May I not once more express my sincere interest in the
cause of woman suffrage?”
Three months of picketing had not been enough. We must not only
continue on duty at his gates but also, at the gates of Congress.