Boston Militants Welcome the President
It was announced that the President would return to America on February
24th. That would leave seven days in which he could act before the
session ended on March 3d. We determined to make another dramatic
effort to move him further.
Boston was to be the President’s landing place. Boston, where ancient
liberties are so venerated, and modern ones so abridged. No more
admirable place could have been found to welcome the President home in
true militant fashion.
Wishing the whole world to know that women were greeting President
Wilson, why they were greeting him, and what form of demonstration the
greetings would assume, we announced our plans in advance. Upon his
arrival a line of pickets would hold banners silently calling to the
President’s attention the demand for his effective aid. In the
afternoon they would hold a meeting in Boston Common and there burn the
parts of the President’s Boston speech which should pertain to
democracy and liberty. These announcements were met with official alarm
of almost unbelievable extent. Whereas front pages had been given over
heretofore to publishing the elaborate plans for the welcome to be
extended to the President, eulogies of the President, and recitals of
his great triumph abroad, now the large proportion of this space was
devoted to clever plans of the police to outwit the suffragists. The
sustained publicity of this demonstration was unprecedented. It
actually filled the Boston papers for all of two weeks.
A “deadline,” a diagram of which appeared in the press, was to be
established beyond which no suffragist, no matter how enterprising,
could penetrate to harass the over-worked President with foolish ideas
about the importance of liberty for women. Had not this great man the
cares of the world on his shoulders? This was no time to talk about
liberty for women! The world was rocking and a great peace conference
was sitting, and the President was just returning to report on the work
done so far. The Boston descendants of the early revolutionists would
do their utmost to see that no untoward event should mar the perfection
of their plans. They would see to it that the sacred soil of the old
Boston Common should not be disgraced.
It was a perfect day. Lines of marines whose trappings shone
brilliantly in the clear sunshine were in formation to hold back the
crowds from the Reviewing stand where the President should appear after
heading the procession in his honor. It seemed as if all Boston were on
hand for the welcome. A slender file of twenty-two women marched
silently into the sunshine, slipped through the “deadline,” and made
its way to the base‘ of the Reviewing stand. There it unfurled its
beautiful banners and took up its post directly facing the line of
marines which was supposed to keep all suffragists at bay. Quite calmly
and yet triumphantly, they stood there, a pageant of beauty and defiant
appeal, which not even the most hurried passerby could fail to see and
comprehend.
There were consultations by the officials in charge of the ceremonies.
The women looked harmless enough, but had they not been told that they
must not come there? They were causing no riot, in fact they were
clearly adding much beauty—people seemed to take them as part of the
elaborate ceremony—but officials seldom have sense of humor enough or
adaptability enough to change quickly, especially when they have made
threats. It would be a taint on their honor, if they did not “pick up”
the women for the deed.
One could hear the people reading slowly the large lettered banner:
MR. PRESIDENT, YOU SAID IN THE SENATE ON SEPTEMBER 20 “WE SHALL NOT
ONLY BE DISTRUSTED BUT WE SHALL DESERVE TO BE DISTRUSTED IF WE DO NOT
ENFRANCHISE WOMEN.” YOU ALONE CAN REMOVE THIS DISTRUST NOW BY SECURING
THE ONE VOTE NEEDED TO PASS THE SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT BEFORE MARCH 4.
The American flag carried by Miss Katherine Morey of Brookline held the
place of honor at the head of the line and there were the familiar,
“Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?” and “Mr.
President, what will you do for woman suffrage?” The other banners were
simply purple, white and gold.
“When we had stood there about three quarters of an hour,” said
Katherine Morey, “Superintendent Crowley came to me and said, ‘We want
to be as nice as we can to you suffragette ladies, but you cannot stand
here while the President goes by, so you might as well go back now.’ I
said I was sorry, but as we had come simply to be there at that very
time, we would not be able to go back until the President had gone by.
He thereupon made a final appeal to Miss Paul, who was at headquarters,
but she only repeated our statement. The patrol wagons were hurried to
the scene and the arrests were executed in an exceedingly gentlemanly
manner. But the effect on the crowd was electric. The sight of ‘ladies’
being put into patrols, seemed to thrill the Boston masses as nothing
the President subsequently said was able to.
“We were taken to the House of Detention and there charged with
‘loitering more than seven minutes’.”
As Mrs. Agnes H. Morey, Massachusetts Chairman of the Woman’s Party,
later remarked:
“It is a most extraordinary thing. Thousands loitered from curiosity on
the day the President arrived. Twenty-two loitered for liberty, and
only those who loitered for liberty were arrested.”
Realizing that the event of the morning had diverted public attention
to our issue, and undismayed by the arrests, other women entered the
lists to sustain public attention upon our demand to the President.
The ceremony on the Common began at three o’clock. Throngs of people
packed in closely in an effort to hear the speakers, and to catch a
glimpse of the ceremony, presided over by Mrs. Louise Sykes of
Cambridge, whose late husband was President of the Connecticut College
for Women. From three o’clock until six, women explained the purpose of
the protest, the status of the amendment, and urged those present to
help. At six o’clock came the order to arrest. Mrs. C. C. Jack, wife of
Professor Jack of Harvard University, Mrs. Mortimer Warren of Boston,
whose husband was head of a base hospital in France, and Miss Elsie
Hill, daughter of the late Congressman Hill, were arrested and were
taken to the House of Detention, where they joined their comrades.
“Dirty, filthy hole under the Court House,” was the general
characterization of the House of Detention. “Jail was a Paradise
compared to this depraved place,” said Miss Morey. “We slept in our
clothes, four women to a cell, on iron shelves two feet wide. In the
cell was an open toilet. The place slowly filled up during the night
with drunks and disorderlies until pandemonium reigned. In the evening,
Superintendent Crowley and Commissioner Curtis came to call on us. I
don’t believe they had ever been there before, and they were painfully
embarrassed. Superintendent Crowley said to me, “If you were drunk we
could release you in the morning, but unfortunately since you are not
we have got to take you into court.”
When the prisoners were told next morning the decision of Chief Justice
Bolster to try each prisoner separately and in closed court, they all
protested against such proceedings. But guards took the women by force
to a private room. “The Matron, who was terrified,” said Miss Morey,
“shouted to the guards, ‘You don’t handle the drunks that way. You know
you don’t.’ But they continued to push, shove and shake the women while
forcing them to the ante room.”
“As an American citizen under arrest, I demand a public trial,” was the
statement of each on entering the judge’s private trial room.
While the trial was proceeding without the women’s cooperation,—some
were tried under wrong names, some were tried more than once under
different names, but most of them under the name of Jane Doe—vigorous
protests were being made to all the city officials by individuals among
the throngs who had come to the court house to attend the trial. This
protest was so strong that the last three women were tried in open
court. The judge sentenced everybody impartially to eight days in j ail
in lieu of fines, with the exception of Miss Wilma Henderson, who was
released when it was learned that she was a minor.
The women were taken to the Charles Street Jail to serve their
sentences. “The cells were immaculately clean,” said Miss Morey, “but
there was one feature of this experience which obliterated all its
advantages. The cells were without modern toilet facilities. The toilet
equipment consisted of a heavy wooden bucket, about two and a half feet
high and a foot and a half in diameter, half filled with water. No one
of us will ever forget that foul bucket. It had to be carried to the
lower floor—we were on the third and fourth floors—every morning. I
could hardly lift mine off the floor, to say nothing of getting it down
stairs (Miss Morey weighs 98 pounds), so there it stayed. Berry Pottier
managed to get hers down, but was so exhausted she was utterly unable
to get it back to her cell.
“The other toilet facility provided was a smaller bucket of water to
wash in, but it was of such a strangely unpleasant odor that we did not
dare use it.”
The Boston reporters were admitted freely—and they wrote columns of
copy. There was the customary ridicule, but there were friendly light
touches such as, “Militant Highlights—To be roommates at Vassar College
and then to meet again as cellmates was the experience of Miss Elsie
Hill and Mrs. Lois Warren Shaw.” . . . “Superintendent Kelleher didn’t
know when he was in Congress with Elsie Hill’s father he would some day
have Congressman Hill’s daughter in his jail.”
And there were friendly serious touches in these pages of sensational
news—such as this excerpt from the front page of the Boston Traveler of
February 25, 1919. “The reporter admired the spirit of the women.
Though weary from loss of sleep, the fire of a great purpose burned in
their eyes . . . .
“It was a sublime forgetting of self for the goal ahead, and whether
the reader is in sympathy with the principle for which these women are
ready to suffer or not, he will be forced to admire the spirit which
leads them on.”
Photographs of the women were printed day by day—giving their
occupations, if any, noting their revolutionary ancestors, ascertaining
the attitude of husbands and fathers. Mrs. Shaw’s husband’s telegram
was typical of the support the women got. “Don’t be quitters,” he
wired, “I have competent nurses to look after the children.” Mr. Shaw
is a Harvard graduate and a successful manufacturer in Manchester, New
Hampshire.
Telegrams of protest from all over the country poured in upon all the
Boston officials who had had any point of contact with the militants.
All other work was for the moment suspended. Such is the quality of
Mrs. Morey’s organizing genius that she did not let a solitary official
escape. Telegrams also went from Boston, and especially from the jail,
to President Wilson.
Official Boston was in the grip of this militant invasion when suddenly
a man of mystery, one E. J. Howe, appeared and paid the women’s fines.
It was later discovered that the mysterious E. J. Howe alleged to have
acted for a “client.” Whether the “client” was a part of Official
Boston, no one ever knew. There were rumors that the city wished to end
its embarrassment.
Sedate Boston had been profoundly shaken. Sedate Boston gave more
generously than ever before to militant finances. And when the “Prison
Special” arrived a few days later a Boston theatre was filled to
overflowing with a crowd eager to hear more about their local heroines,
and to cheer them while they were decorated with the already famous
prison pin.
Something happened in Washington, too, after the President’s safe
journey thither from Boston.