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[Illustration: ALICE PAUL. Taken the Day Before She Went to Prison.
Photo Copr. Edmonston Studio, Washington, D. C.]
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THE STORY OF
THE WOMAN’S PARTY
BY
INEZ HAYNES IRWIN
ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
[Illustration: Publisher’s Logo]
NEW YORK
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY
1921
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COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.
THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY
RAHWAY. N. J.
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“But with such women consecrating their lives failure is impossible.”
Last words spoken in public by SUSAN B. ANTHONY—
her birthday, 1906.
“Most of those who worked with me in the early years have gone. I am
here for a little time only and my place will be filled as theirs was
filled. The fight must not cease; you must see that it does not stop.”
SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO THE INSPIRED, DEVOTED, UNTIRING, AND SELF-
SACRIFICING MEMBERS OF THE WOMAN’S PARTY,
AND IN ESPECIAL TO THOSE WHOSE WORK CANNOT
FOR LACK OF SPACE BE MENTIONED HERE OR
WHOSE EFFORTS MAY NEVER EVEN IN THE FUTURE
BE PROPERLY APPRECIATED, THIS BOOK
IS ADMIRINGLY AND REVERENTLY DEDICATED.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
PART ONE
1913-1914
I. INTRODUCTION 3
II. ALICE PAUL 6
III. ALICE PAUL AND LUCY BURNS 14
IV. F STREET AND THE EARLY DAYS 18
V. MAKING THE FEDERAL AMENDMENT AN ISSUE 31
VI. PRESSURE ON CONGRESS 49
VII. PRESSURE ON THE PRESIDENT 57
VIII. THE STRUGGLE WITH THE RULES COMMITTEE 66
IX. THE FIRST APPEAL TO THE WOMEN VOTERS 73
X. CONGRESS TAKES UP THE SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT 87
PART TWO
1915-1916
I. THE WOMAN VOTERS APPEAL TO THE PRESIDENT 99
AND TO CONGRESS
II. THE NEW HEADQUARTERS AND THE MIDDLE 123
YEARS
III. THE CONFLICT WITH THE JUDICIARY 130
COMMITTEE
IV. MORE PRESSURE ON THE PRESIDENT 144
V. FORMING THE WOMAN’S PARTY 149
VI. STILL MORE PRESSURE ON THE PRESIDENT 164
VII. THE SECOND APPEAL TO THE WOMEN VOTERS 172
VIII. HAIL AND FAREWELL 183
PART THREE
1917
I. THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION 193
1. THE PEACEFUL PICKETING 193
2. THE PEACEFUL RECEPTION 212
3. THE WAR ON PICKETS 220
4. THE COURT AND THE PICKETS 259
5. THE STRANGE LADIES 261
II. TELLING THE COUNTRY 292
III. MORE PRESSURE ON CONGRESS 299
PART FOUR
VICTORY
I. THE NEW HEADQUARTERS AND THE LATER YEARS 311
II. LOBBYING 317
III. ORGANIZING 327
IV. THE PRESIDENT CAPITULATES AND THE HOUSE 336
SURRENDERS
V. FIGHTING FOR VOTES IN THE SENATE 340
VI. BURNING THE PRESIDENT’S WORDS 355
VII. THE PRESIDENT APPEALS TO THE SENATE TO 366
PASS THE SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT
VIII. PICKETING THE SENATE 372
IX. THE THIRD APPEAL TO THE WOMEN VOTERS 380
X. THE PRESIDENT INCLUDES SUFFRAGE IN HIS 384
CAMPAIGN FOR CONGRESS
XI. BURNING THE PRESIDENT’S WORDS AGAIN 386
XII. THE WATCH FIRES OF FREEDOM 391
XIII. THE APPEAL TO THE PRESIDENT ON HIS 408
RETURN
XIV. THE APPEAL TO THE PRESIDENT ON HIS 412
DEPARTURE
XV. THE PRESIDENT OBTAINS THE LAST VOTE AND 415
CONGRESS SURRENDERS
XVI. RATIFICATION 418
XVII. THE LAST DAYS 464
INDEX 477
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Alice Paul Frontispiece
Lucy Burns at the Head of the “Prison Specialists” 16
Why is the Girl from the West Getting all the 76
Attention? Cartoon by Nina Allender
The Suffragist’s Dream. Cartoon by Nina Allender 146
Inez Milholland in the Washington Parade, March 3, 184
1913
Joy Young at the Inez Milholland Memorial Service 188
Wage Earners Picketing the White House, February, 200
1917
The Thousand Pickets try vainly to Deliver Their 204a
Resolutions to the President, March 4, 1917
A Thousand Pickets Marching Around the White 204b
House, March 4, 1917
Obeying Orders, Washington Police Arresting White 256a
House Pickets Before the Treasury Building
The Patrol Wagon Waiting the Arrival of the 256b
Suffrage Pickets
Burning the President’s Words at the Lafayette 356a
Monument, Washington
A Summer Picket Line 356b
Lucy Branham Burning the President’s Words at the 364b
Lafayette Monument
The Russian Envoy Banner, August, 1917 364b
One of the Watchfires of Freedom 396a
A Policeman Scatters the Watchfire 396b
Suffragist Rebuilding the Fire Scattered by the 398a
Police
The Last Suffragist Arrested. The Fire Burns On 398b
The Oldest and the Youngest Pickets 448
The Flag Complete 462
Every Good Suffragist the Morning after 470
Ratification. Cartoon by Nina Allender
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PART ONE
1913 and 1914
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I
INTRODUCTION
IN 1912 the situation in the United States in regard to the
enfranchisement of women was as follows:
Agitation for an amendment to the National Constitution had virtually
ceased. Before the death of Susan B. Anthony in 1906, Suffragists had
turned their attention to the States. Suffrage agitation there was
persistent, vigorous, and untiring; in Washington, it was merely
perfunctory. The National American Woman Suffrage Association maintained
a Congressional Committee in Washington, but no Headquarters. This
Committee arranged for one formal hearing before the Senate and the
House Committee of each Congress. The speeches were used as propaganda
mailed on a Congressman’s frank. The Suffrage Amendment had never in the
history of the country been brought to a vote in the National House of
Representatives, and had only once, in 1887, been voted upon in the
Senate. It had not received a favorable report from the Committee in
either House since 1892 and had not received a report of any kind since
1896. Suffrage had not been debated on the floor of either House since
1887. In addition, the incoming President, Woodrow Wilson, if not
actually opposed to the enfranchisement of women, gave no appearance of
favoring it; the great political Parties were against it. Political
leaders generally were unwilling to be connected with it. Congress
lacked—it is scarcely exaggeration to say—several hundreds of the votes
necessary to pass the Amendment. Last of all the majority of Suffragists
did not think the Federal Amendment a practical possibility. They were
entirely engrossed in State campaigns.
On the other hand, the Suffrage movement, itself, was virile and vital.
The fourth generation of women to espouse this cause were throwing
themselves into the work with all the power and force of their able,
aroused, and emancipate generation. The franchise had been granted in
six States: Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Washington, California. With
the winning of Oregon, Kansas, and Arizona in 1912, the movement assumed
a new importance in the national field. These victories meant that there
were approximately two million women voters in the United States, that
one-fifth of the Senate, one-seventh of the House and one-sixth of the
electoral vote came from Suffrage States.
It was in December, 1912, as Chairman of the Congressional Committee of
the National American Woman Suffrage Association, that Alice Paul came
to Washington.
* * * * *
In the next eight years, this young woman was to bring into existence a
new political Party of fifty thousand members. She was to raise over
three-quarters of a million dollars. She was to establish a Headquarters
in Washington that became the focus of the liberal forces of the
country. She was to gather into her organization hundreds of devoted
workers; some without pay and others with less pay than they could
command at other work or with other organizations. She was to introduce
into Suffrage agitation in the United States a policy which, though not
new in the political arena, was new to Suffrage—the policy of holding
the Party in power responsible. She was to institute a Suffrage campaign
so swift, so intensive, so compelling—and at the same time so varied,
interesting, and picturesque—that again and again it pushed the war news
out of the preferred position on the front pages of the newspapers of
the United States. She was to see her Party blaze a purple, white, and
gold trail from the east to the west of the United States; and from the
north to the south. She was to see the Susan B. Anthony Amendment pass
first the House and then the Senate. She was to see thirty-seven States
ratify the Amendment in less than a year and a half thereafter. She was
to see the President of the United States move from a position of what
seemed definite opposition to the Suffrage cause to an open espousal of
it; move slowly at first but with a progress which gradually accelerated
until he, himself, obtained the last Senatorial vote necessary to pass
the Amendment.
What was the training which had developed in Alice Paul this power and
what were the qualities back of that training, which made it possible
for her to invent so masterly a plan, to pursue it so resistlessly?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
II
ALICE PAUL
I watched a river of women,
Rippling purple, white and golden,
Stream toward the National Capitol.
Along its border,
Like a purple flower floating,
Moved a young woman, worn, wraithlike,
With eyes alight, keenly observing the marchers.
Out there on the curb, she looked so little, so lonely;
Few appeared even to see her;
No one saluted her.
Yet commander was she of the column, its leader;
She was the spring whence arose that irresistible river of women
Streaming steadily towards the National Capitol.
KATHERINE ROLSTON FISHER,
_The Suffragist_, January 19, 1918.
IT is an interesting coincidence that the woman who bore the greatest
single part in the Suffrage fight at the beginning—Susan Anthony—and the
woman who bore the greatest single part at the end—Alice Paul—were both
Quakers.
* * * * *
It is very difficult to get Alice Paul to talk about herself. She is not
much interested in herself and she is interested, with every atom of
her, in the work she is doing. She will tell you, if you ask her, that
she was born in Moorestown, New Jersey, and then her interest seems to
die. She apparently does not remember herself very clearly either as a
child or a young girl. That is not strange. So intently has she worked
in the last eight years and so intensely has she lived in that work that
each year seems to have erased its predecessor. She is absolutely
concentrated on _now_. I asked Alice Paul once what converted her to
Woman Suffrage. She said that she could not remember when she did not
believe in it. She added, “You know the Quakers have always believed in
Woman Suffrage.”
Anne Herendeen, in a vivacious article on Alice Paul in _Everybody’s
Magazine_ for October, 1919, says, describing a visit to Moorestown:
“What do you think of all these goings-on?” I asked her mother. She
sighed.
“Well, Mr. Paul always used to say, when there was anything hard and
disagreeable to be done, ‘I bank on Alice.’”
The degree of education in Alice Paul’s life and the amount of social
service which she had performed are a little staggering in view of her
youth. Just the list of the degrees she achieved and the positions she
held before she started the National Woman’s Party covers a typewritten
page. They have even an unexpected international quality. One notes
first—and without undue astonishment—that she acquired a B.A. at
Swarthmore in 1905; an M.A. at the University of Pennsylvania in 1907; a
Ph.D. at the same university in 1912. This would seem enough to fill the
educational leisure of most young women, but it does not by any means
complete Alice Paul’s student career. She was a graduate of the New York
School of Philanthropy in 1906. She was a student at the Woodbrooke
Settlement for Social Work at Woodbrooke, Birmingham, and in the
University of Birmingham, England, in 1907-08; a graduate student in
sociology and economics in the School of Economics of the University of
London in 1908-09.
She was, in addition, a Resident Worker of the New York College
Settlement in 1905-06; a Visitor for the New York Charity Organization
Society in the summer of 1906; a Worker in the Summer Lane Settlement,
and a Visitor in the Charity Organization Society of Birmingham,
England, during the winter of 1907-08; Assistant-secretary to the
Dalston Branch of the Charity Organization Society in London for a half
year in 1908; a Visitor for the Peel Institute for Social Work at
Clerkenwell, London, for a half year in 1908-09; a Resident Worker for
the Christian Social Union Settlement of Hoxton, London, in the summer
of 1908. She was also in charge of the Women’s Department of the branch
of adult schools at Hoxton in the summer of 1908.
I asked Mabel Vernon, who went to Swarthmore with her, about Alice Paul.
Her impressions were a little vague—mainly of a normal, average young
girl who had not yet begun to “show.” She remembered that, although
biology was her specialty, Miss Paul was catholic in her choice of
courses; how—as though it were something she expected to need—she took a
great deal of Latin; and that—as though at the urge of the same
intuition—she devoted herself to athletics. She had apparently no
athletic gifts; yet before she left Swarthmore she was on the girls’
varsity basketball team, was on her own class hockey team, and had taken
third place in the women’s tennis tournament. She was a rosy, rounded,
vigorous-looking girl then. When Mabel Vernon saw her next, she had been
hunger-striking in England and was thin to the point of emaciation.
I asked Alice Paul herself about her work with the poor in England. She
said, looking back on it—and it is apparently always a great effort for
her to remove her mental vision from the present demand—that her main
impression was of the hopelessness of it all, that there seemed nothing
to do but sweep all that poverty away. The thing that she remembers
especially now is that they were always burying children.
The first great, outstanding fact of Alice Paul’s training is that in
the English interregnum which divided her American education, she joined
the Pankhurst forces. In the beginning all her work was of the passive
kind. She attended meetings and ushered. She was about to go home;
indeed she had bought her passage when the Pankhursts asked her to join
a deputation to Parliament. This deputation, which consisted of more
than a hundred women, and was led by Mrs. Pankhurst herself, was
arrested at the entrance to Parliament. They were detained in the
policemen’s billiard room of the Cannon Row Police Station, the only
place at that station large enough to hold so many women.
The second great outstanding fact of Alice Paul’s career in England is
that she met Lucy Burns.
Lucy Burns was born in Brooklyn. The facts of her education, although
superficially not so multitudinous as those of Alice Paul, are even more
impressive in point of international quality. She was graduated from
Packer Institute in 1899 and from Vassar College in 1902. She studied at
Yale University in 1902-03, at the University of Berlin in 1906-08, at
the University of Bonn in 1908-09. She joined the Woman’s Social and
Political Union of London in 1909 and she worked as an organizer in
Edinburgh and the east of Scotland in 1909-12.
Lucy Burns thinks she first met Alice Paul at a Suffrage demonstration.
Alice Paul thinks she first met Lucy Burns in that same policemen’s
billiard room of the Cannon Row Police Station, London. Both these young
women remember their English experiences in flashes and pictures. They
worked too hard and too militantly to keep any written record; and
successive hardships wiped away all traces of their predecessors. At any
rate, Alice Paul says that she spoke to Miss Burns because she noticed
that she wore a little American flag. Sitting on the billiard table,
they talked of home. Alice Paul also says that Lucy Burns, a student at
that time of the University of Bonn in Germany, had come to England for
a holiday. She entered the militant movement a few weeks after she
landed and this was her first demonstration.
The women were held for trial, giving bail for their appearance. Alice
Paul had engaged passage home, but she had to cancel it as the trial did
not occur until after the date of her sailing. The case was appealed in
the courts and was finally dropped by the government.
From this time on, the paths of the two girls kept crossing. Frequently,
indeed, they worked together. The next time Alice Paul was arrested,
however, Lucy Burns was not with her. This was at Norwich. Winston
Churchill, a member of the cabinet, was holding a meeting. Outside,
Alice Paul spoke at a meeting too—a protest against the government’s
stand on Woman Suffrage. On this occasion, she was released without
being tried. At the next Suffrage demonstration—at Limehouse in
London—both girls assisted. On this occasion, Lloyd George was holding a
meeting. Miss Paul and Miss Burns were arrested for trying to speak at a
protest meeting outside, and were sentenced to two weeks in Holloway
Jail. They went on a hunger-strike; but were released after five days
and a half.
After they recovered from this experience, Miss Paul and Miss Burns
motored to Scotland with Mrs. Pankhurst and other English Suffragists,
in order to assist with the Scottish campaign. At Glasgow, the party
organized a demonstration outside of a meeting held by Lord Crewe, a
member of the cabinet. Arrested, they were released without trial.
Proceeding northward, Miss Paul assisted in organizing the Suffrage
campaign in East Fife, the district of Prime Minister Herbert Asquith.
At Dundee, Miss Paul and Miss Burns took part in a demonstration outside
a meeting held by Winston Churchill. The two American girls and an
English Suffragist were sentenced to ten days in Dundee Prison. After
four days of hunger-strike, all were released. Each night during their
imprisonment, great crowds of citizens marched round the prison singing
Scotch songs as a means of showing their sympathy with the campaign.
Upon their release, the Suffragists were welcomed at a mass-meeting over
which the Lord Mayor presided. Thence they went to Edinburgh where they
assisted in organizing a procession and pageant in Princess Street—one
of the most beautiful and famous thoroughfares of the world. The pageant
of the Scotch heroines who had made sacrifices for liberty is still
remembered in Scotland for its beauty. The next job was less agreeable.
The two American girls were sent to Berwick-on-Tweed to interrupt with a
protest a meeting of Sir Edward Grey, then Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Miss Paul made the interruption, was arrested, but was released on the
following day without going to trial. Miss Burns was not arrested that
time.
Next in Bermondsey, one of the slum districts of London, they waged a
plain, old-fashioned electoral campaign to defeat a candidate. When this
was over, Miss Paul, in company with a Miss Brown, was sent to make a
Suffrage protest at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in the Guildhall. They were
arrested, of course, and were sentenced to thirty days in Holloway Jail.
They hunger struck, and were forcibly fed. This experience left its mark
on Miss Paul’s health for some time; it was several weeks after her
release before she was strong enough to travel. But in January, 1910,
she sailed for America—and arrived the pale, emaciated creature who so
shocked Mabel Vernon.
Lucy Burns tells an amusing story of Alice Paul’s experiences in
England. Lord Crewe was to speak at a meeting at Glasgow, and Alice Paul
was delegated to represent the Suffragists at that meeting and to heckle
the speaker. That meant that she must conceal herself in the building,
where the meeting was to take place, the night before. The building was
a big, high one—St. Andrew’s Hall, the girls remember the name—and it
was surrounded by a high, formidable iron fence. The night before Lucy
Burns walked with Alice Paul to the Hall and helped her to climb to the
top of this fence. Then Alice Paul jumped down into the grounds and Lucy
Burns left her there. There was some building going on at this hall and
with great difficulty Alice Paul climbed the scaffolding to the high
second story and settled herself on a roof to spend the night. It rained
all night; and of course she had no protection against the wet. And
after all this discomfort, when daylight broke, laborers coming to work
on a neighboring building observed the strange phenomenon of a woman
lying on a second-story roof. They reported her and she was ignominously
led down and out.
In the summer of 1912, Lucy Burns returned to America. Alice Paul
visited her in Long Island. For some time now, Alice Paul had been
considering the Suffrage situation of the United States in its national
aspect. Here, she broached to Lucy Burns her idea of working for a
Constitutional Amendment in Washington—her belief that with six States
enfranchised—with six States that could be used as a lever on
Congress—the time had come when further work in State campaigns was
sheer waste. More even than English conditions, American conditions
favored the policy of holding the Party in power responsible in regard
to Suffrage. In England, there was no body of women completely
enfranchised. In America there were approximately two million women
voters who, completely enfranchised, could command a hearing from the
politicians. She felt that such a campaign in America would be more
productive of result for still another reason. In pursuing that policy
in England, the Suffragists were often placed in the embarrassing
position of defeating Suffragists and putting in anti-Suffragists. But
in America, no matter what Party was in power, only Suffrage senators
and representatives could be elected from the Suffrage States. In other
words, if, in defeating the Party in power they defeated Suffragists—as
was inevitable in the Suffrage States—other Suffragists as inevitably
took their places. Moreover, there was no immediate motive urging
senators and representatives from the Suffrage States—although often
they were individually helpful—to convert senators and representatives
of their own Party from non-Suffrage States. Were their Party in
jeopardy at home, however, that motive was instantly supplied. Also,
Alice Paul thought that it was more dignified of women to ask the vote
of other women than to beg it of men.
Alice Paul was the first to apply this policy to the Suffrage situation
in the United States. As late as 1917, other Suffrage leaders, as well
as members of Congress, were reiterating that there was no such thing as
a Party in power in the United States, that that idea was brought from
England by Alice Paul and was not adapted to our American institutions.
The two girls concocted a scheme for starting federal work in
Washington. They went with it to the National American Woman Suffrage
Association, to Anna Howard Shaw, to Harriot Stanton Blatch, to Mary
Ware Dennett. Lucy Burns pictures Alice Paul at that last interview—“a
little Quakerish figure, crumpled up in her chair and for the first time
I noticed how beautiful her eyes were.” Finally Alice Paul went to the
Convention of the National American Association at Philadelphia. She
talked with Jane Addams. Alice Paul suggested that she be allowed to
come to Washington at her own expense to begin work on Congress for the
passing of a Constitutional Amendment. She agreed to raise the necessary
money. Jane Addams brought this suggestion before the Board of the
National American Woman Suffrage Association, urged its acceptance. It
was approved. The Board appointed a Committee consisting of Alice Paul,
Chairman; Lucy Burns, Vice-chairman; Crystal Eastman. Later in
Washington, Mrs. Lawrence Lewis and Mary Beard joined that Committee.
Alice Paul went first to Philadelphia and collected money for a few
days. Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, who, Miss Paul says, was one of the first to
say, “I have always believed that the way to get Suffrage is by a
federal amendment,” gave her name; gave money; collected money.
And so—all alone—Alice Paul came to Washington.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
III
ALICE PAUL AND LUCY BURNS
ALICE PAUL is a slender, frail-looking young woman, delicately colored
and delicately made. The head, the neck, the long slim arms, and the
little hands look as though they were cut out of alabaster. The dense
shadowy hair, scooping with deeper accessions of shadow into great
waves, dipping low on her forehead and massing into a great dusky bunch
in her neck, might be carved from bronze. It looks too heavy for her
head. Her face has a kind of powerful irregularity. Its prevailing
expression is of a brooding stillness; yet when she smiles, dimples
appear. Her eyes are big and quiet; dark—like moss-agates. When she is
silent they are almost opaque. When she talks they light up—rather they
glow—in a notable degree of luminosity. Her voice is low; musical; it
pulsates with a kind of interrogative plaintiveness. When you ask her a
question, there ensues, on her part, a moment of a stillness so
profound, you can almost hear it. I think I have never seen anybody who
can keep so still as Alice Paul. But when she answers you, the lucidity
of exposition, the directness of expression! Always she looks you
straight in the eye, and when she has finished speaking she holds you
with that luminous glow. Her tiny hands make gestures, almost humorous
in their gentleness and futility, compared with the force of her
remarks.
In the endless discussions at Headquarters—discussions that consider
every subject on earth and change constantly in personnel and point of
view—she is always the most silent. But when at last she speaks, often
there ensues a pause; she has summed it all up. Superficially she seems
cold, austere, a little remote. But that is only because the fire of her
spirit burns at such a heat that it is still and white. She has the
quiet of the spinning top.
As for her mentality ... her capacity for leadership ... her vision....
There is no difference of opinion in regard to Alice Paul in the Woman’s
Party. With one accord, they say, “She is the Party.” They regard her
with an admiration which verges on awe. Mentally she walks apart; not
because she has any conscious sense of superiority, but because of the
swiftness, amplitude, and completeness with which her mind marches—her
marvelous powers of concentration and her blazing devotion to the work.
I think no better description can be given of her than to quote the
exact phrases which her associates use in talking of her. Winifred
Mallon speaks of her “burning sincerity.” Helena Hill Weed imputes a
“prescience” to her. Anne Martin says, “She is the heart, brain, and
soul of the Woman’s Party,” and “Her mind moves with the precision of a
beautiful machine.” Nina Allender sums her up as “a Napoleon without
self-indulgence.” She said that when at the hearing in 1915, Congressmen
tried to tangle Alice Paul they found it an impossibility; everything in
Alice Paul’s mentality was so clear; there was nothing to tangle. She
added, “There are no two minds to Alice Paul.” “My mother describes
her,” she concluded, “as a flame undyingly burning.”
This is Maud Younger’s tribute:
She has in the first place a devotion to the cause which is
absolutely self-sacrificing. She has an indomitable will. She
recognizes no obstacles. She has a clear, penetrating, analytic mind
which cleaves straight to the heart of things. In examining a
situation, she always bares the main fact; she sees all the forces
which make for change in that situation. She is a genius for
organization, both in the mass and in detail. She understands
perfectly, in achieving the big object, the cumulative effect of
multitudes of small actions and small services. She makes use of all
material, whether human or otherwise, that comes along. Her work has
perpetual growth; it never stagnates; it is always branching out.
She is never hampered or cluttered. She is free of the past. Her
inventiveness and resourcefulness are endless. She believes
absolutely in open diplomacy. She believes that everything should be
told; our main argument with her was in regard to the necessity for
secrecy in special cases. She is almost without suspicion; and
sometimes with a too-great tendency towards kind judgment in the
case of the individual. It seems incredible that with all these
purely intellectual gifts, she should possess an acute appreciation
of beauty; a gift for pageantry; an amazing sense of humor.
Lucy Burns says:
When Alice Paul spoke to me about the federal work, I knew that she
had an extraordinary mind, extraordinary courage and remarkable
executive ability. But I felt she had two disabilities—ill-health
and a lack of knowledge of human nature. I was wrong in both. I was
staggered by her speed and industry and the way she could raise
money. Her great assets, I should say, are her power, with a single
leap of the imagination, to make plans on a national scale; and a
supplementary power to see that done down to the last postage stamp.
But because she can do all this, people let her do it—often she has
to carry her own plans out down to the very last postage stamp. She
used all kinds of people; she tested them through results. She is
exceedingly charitable in her judgments of people and patient. She
assigned one inept person to five different kinds of work before she
gave her up. Her abruptness lost some workers, but not the finer
spirits. The very absence of anything like personal appeal seemed to
help her.
[Illustration: LUCY BURNS AT THE HEAD OF THE “PRISON SPECIALISTS.” These
Women, All of Whom Served Terms in Jail, Are Wearing a Reproduction of
Their Prison Garb. Photo Copr. Harris and Ewing, Washington, D. C.]
Lucy Burns is as different a type from Alice Paul as one could imagine.
She is tall—or at least she seems tall; rounded and muscular; a
splendidly vigorous physical specimen. If Alice Paul looks as though she
were a Tanagra carved from alabaster, Lucy Burns seems like a figure,
heroically sculptured, from marble. She is blue-eyed and
fresh-complexioned; dimpled; and her head is burdened, even as Alice
Paul’s, by an enormous weight of hair. Lucy Burn’s hair is a brilliant
red; and even as she flashes, it flashes. It is full of sparkle. She is
a woman of twofold ability. She speaks and writes with equal eloquence
and elegance. Her speeches before Suffrage bodies, her editorials in the
_Suffragist_ are models of clearness; conciseness; of accumulative force
of expression. Mentally and emotionally, she is quick and warm. Her
convictions are all vigorous and I do not think Lucy Burns would
hesitate for a moment to suffer torture, to die, for them. She has
intellectuality of a high order; but she overruns with a winning
Irishness which supplements that intellectuality with grace and charm; a
social mobility of extreme sensitiveness and swiftness. In those early
days in Washington, with all her uncompromising militantism, Lucy Burns
was the diplomat of the pair; the tactful, placating force.
I asked a member of the Woman’s Party who had watched the work from the
beginning what was the difference between the two women. She answered,
“They are both political-minded. They seemed in those early days to have
one spirit and one brain. Both saw the situation exactly as it was, but
they went at the problem with different methods. Alice Paul had a more
acute sense of justice, Lucy Burns, a more bitter sense of injustice.
Lucy Burns would become angry because the President or the people did
not do this or that. Alice Paul never expected anything of them.”
Both these women had the highest kind of courage. Lucy Burns—although
she admits that at Occoquan Workhouse, she suffered from nameless
terrors—has a mental poise that is almost unsusceptible to fear. Alice
Paul—although she can with perfect composure endure arrest,
imprisonment, hunger-striking—acknowledges timidities. She does not like
to listen to horrors of any description, especially ghost-stories. They
say though that, in the movies, she always particularly enjoyed pirates.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IV
F STREET AND THE EARLY DAYS
WHEN Alice Paul arrived in Washington in December, 1912, she found a
discouraging state of things. She had been given the address of
Headquarters, but Headquarters had vanished. She had been given a list
of people to whom she could turn for help, but most of them had died or
moved away. At that time, Mrs. William Kent, who was subsequently to
become one of her constant and able assistants, was Chairman of the
Congressional Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage
Association. Two years before, when her husband was elected to Congress,
Mrs. Kent came to Washington. When she was asked to become Chairman of
this Committee she was told that it would entail no work. She must
merely see that the bill was introduced and arrange hearings before the
two committees. There was no thought of putting the Amendment through,
and no lobbying for it. The National Association allowed Mrs. Kent ten
dollars. At the end of the year she returned change. There were a few
Suffrage clubs in Washington, but their activity was merely social.
Alice Paul saw that the work had to be started from the very beginning.
First of all they had to have Headquarters. She hired a little basement
room at 1420 F Street. At a formal opening on January 2, 1913, Mrs.
William Kent, presiding, introduced Alice Paul as her successor; and a
plan for federal work was laid before the Suffragists of the District of
Columbia. Of course no one at the meeting guessed that she was present
at a historic occasion.
Alice Paul began work at once. Nina Allender says that one Sunday a
stranger called. She was wearing “a slim dress and a little purple hat
and she was no bigger,” Mrs. Allender held up her forefinger, “than
_that_.” The call was brief and it was unaccompanied by any of the small
talk or the persiflage which distinguishes most social occasions. But
when the door closed, a few moments later, mother and daughter looked at
each other in amazement. Mrs. Evans had promised to contribute to
Suffrage a sum of money monthly. Mrs. Allender had promised to
contribute to Suffrage a sum of money monthly. Mrs. Evans had agreed to
do a certain amount of work monthly. Mrs. Allender had agreed to do a
certain amount of work monthly. Their amazement arose partly from the
fact that they had not been begged, urged, or argued with—they had
simply been asked; and partly from the fact that, before the arrival of
this slim little stranger, they had no more idea of contributing so much
money or work than of flying. But they agreed to it the instant she
requested it of them.
This is a perfect example of the way Alice Paul works. There may be
times when she urges, even begs; but they appear to be rare. She often
forgets to thank you when you say yes; for she has apparently assumed
that you will say yes. She does not argue with you when you say no—but
you rarely say no. She has only to ask apparently. Perhaps it is part
the terseness with which she puts her request. Perhaps it is part her
simple acceptance of the fact that you are not going to refuse. Perhaps
it is her expectation that you will understand that she is not asking
for herself but for Suffrage. Perhaps it is the Quaker integrity which
shines through every statement. Perhaps it is the intensity of devotion
which blazes back of the gentleness of her personality and the
inflexibility of purpose which gives that gentleness power. At any rate,
it is very difficult to refuse Alice Paul.
A member of the Woman’s Party, meeting her for the first time in New
York and riding for a short distance in a taxicab with her, says that
Alice Paul turned to her as soon as they were alone:
“Will you give a thousand dollars to the Woman’s Party?”
“No, I haven’t that amount to give.”
“Will you give one hundred dollars?”
“No.”
“Will you give twenty-five dollars?”
“No.”
“Will you——”
“I’ll give five dollars.”
Mrs. Gilson Gardner says that one day, in the midst of the final
preparations for the procession of March 3, she came to Headquarters.
Alice Paul, it was apparent, was in a state of considerable
perturbation. At the sight of Mrs. Gardner she said, “There’s Mrs.
Gardner! She’ll attend to it.” She went on to explain. “The trappings
for the horses have been ruined. Will you order some more? They must be
delivered tomorrow night.” Mrs. Gardner says that she had no more idea
how to order a trapping than a suspension bridge, but—magic-ed as always
by Alice Paul’s personality—she emitted a terrified “Yes,” and started
out. She walked round and round the block a dozen times, reviewing her
problem, and casting about her looks of an appalled desperation.
Suddenly she espied a little tailor shop, and in it, at work, a little
tailor. She approached and confided her problem to him. Mrs. Gardner
kept shop while he went to Headquarters and got the measurements. He
delivered the trappings on time.
Later in the history of the Woman’s Party, Margery Ross came to
Washington to spend the winter with a cousin.
She was young and pretty. She established herself there and began to
enjoy herself. She was a Suffragist. One day, out of a clear sky, Alice
Paul said: “Miss Ross, will you go to Wyoming on Saturday, and organize
a State Convention there within three weeks?” “Why, Miss Paul,” the girl
faltered, “I _can’t_. My plans are all made for the winter. I’ve only
just got here.” Nevertheless, in a few days, Miss Ross started for
Wyoming. There were only eight members of the Congressional Union in
that State, and yet three weeks later she had achieved a State
Convention with one hundred and twenty delegates.
Perhaps, however, the story which best illustrates Miss Paul’s power to
make people work is one of Nina Allender’s. One must remember that Mrs.
Allender is an artist. One day Alice Paul telephoned her to ask her if
she would go the next day to Ohio to campaign for the Woman’s Party.
Mrs. Allender, who had no more expectation of going to Ohio than to the
moon, replied: “I’m sorry. It’s impossible. You see, we have just moved.
The place is being papered and painted, and I’ve got to select the
wallpaper.” “Oh, that’s all right,” Alice Paul suggested. “I’ll send a
girl right up there. _She’ll pick your paper for you and see that it’s
put on._” In the end, of course, Mrs. Allender chose her own paper. But
although she did not go to Ohio the next day, she went within a week.
When Alice Paul asked Maud Younger to deliver the memorial address on
Inez Milholland, Miss Younger was at first staggered by the idea. “I
can’t,” she said. “I don’t know how to do it.”
“Oh,” directed Alice Paul in a _dégagé_ way, “_just write something like
Lincoln’s Gettysburg address_.”
The first Headquarters consisted of one long basement room, partitioned
at the back into three small rooms of which two were storerooms, and one
Miss Paul’s office. This opened into a court. Later when the
_Suffragist_ was published, they had rooms upstairs; sometimes one,
sometimes more, according to their funds. By the first anniversary, they
had expanded to ten rooms. Later still, they had two whole floors.
Almost all the work was done by volunteers. All kinds of people worked
for them. Comparatively idle women of the moneyed class gave up
matinées, teas, and other social occasions; stenographers, who worked
all day long, labored until midnight. Anybody who dropped into
Headquarters for any purpose was put to work. Once a distinguished
lawyer from a western city called on business with Alice Paul.
“Would you mind addressing a few envelopes?” asked Alice Paul when the
business was concluded. The distinguished lawyer, whose own office was
of course manned by a small army of stenographers, smiled; but he took
off his coat and went to work.
Alice Paul’s swift, decisive leadership was accepted, unquestioningly.
Her word was immutable. One day an elderly woman was observed at a
typewriter, painfully picking at it with a stiff forefinger. It was
obvious that with a great expenditure of time and energy, she was
accomplishing nothing.
“Why are you doing that?” somebody asked curiously.
“Because Alice Paul told me to,” was the plaintive answer.
Most of the work was done in the big front room. The confusion of going
and coming of the volunteer workers; the noise of conflicting activity;
conversation; telephones; made concentrated thinking almost impossible.
The policeman on the beat said that a light burned in Headquarters all
night long. That was true. Alice Paul and Lucy Burns used to work far
into the morning because then, alone, were they assured of quiet. There
were times though when Alice Paul worked all day, all night and sitting
up in bed, into the next morning. She never lost time. Later when she
picketed the White House, she used to take a stenographer with her and
dictate while on picket duty.
Volunteer work is of course not always to be depended upon. It is
eccentric and follows its own laws. There would be periods when
Headquarters would be flooded with help. There came intervals when it
was almost empty. Sara Grogan, herself a devoted adherent, tells how in
this case, she used to go out on the streets and ask strangers to help.
Volunteer workers—if they were housekeepers or the mothers of
families—learned, on their busy days, to give F Street a wide berth. As
they had no time to give and as it was impossible to say no to Alice
Paul, the streets about Headquarters were as closed to them as the
streets of his creditors to Dick Swiveller. It was perhaps this
experience which taught Alice Paul what later became one of her chief
assets—her power to put to use every bit of human material that came her
way; which developed in her that charitable willingness, when this human
material failed in one direction, to try it in another; and another; and
another. Rarely did she reject any offer of help, no matter how
untrained or seemingly untrainable it was. I asked Mabel Vernon how she
got so much work—and such splendid work of all kinds—out of amateurs.
She answered, “She believed we could do it and so she made us believe
it.”
In those days, Alice Paul herself was like one driven by a fury of
speed. She was a human dynamo. She made everybody else work as hard as
possible, but she drove—although she did drive—nobody so hard as
herself. Winifred Mallon said, “I worked with Alice Paul for three
months before I saw her with her hat off. I was perfectly astonished, I
remember, at that mass of hair. I had never suspected its existence.”
For a long time, Alice Paul deliberately lived in a cold room, so that
she could not be tempted to sit up late to read. It was more than a year
before she visited the book-shop opened by a friend because, she said,
“I should be tempted to buy so many books there.” Anne Martin says that
she believes Alice Paul made a vow not to think or to read anything that
was not connected with Suffrage until the Amendment was passed. There
was certainly no evidence of her reading anything else. They make the
humorous observation at Headquarters now that the instant the Amendment
had passed both Houses, Alice Paul began to permit herself the luxury of
one mental relaxation—the reading of detective stories. But in those
early days she worked all the time and she worked at everything.
Somebody said to Lucy Burns, “She asks nothing of us that she doesn’t do
herself,” and Lucy Burns answered dryly, “Yes, she’s annoyingly
versatile.”
Not only did Alice Paul ask you to work but after you had agreed to it,
she kept after you. “She ‘nagged’ us”-they say humorously at
Headquarters. Once, just before leaving for Chicago, Alice Paul
appointed a certain young person chairman of a certain committee, with
power to select chairmen of ten other committees to arrange for a
demonstration when the Suffrage Special returned. This was four weeks
off and yet in three days from Chicago came a telegram: “Wire me
immediately the names of your chairmen!”
But just as Alice Paul never thanked herself for what she was doing, it
never occurred to her to thank anybody else. And perhaps she had an
innate conviction that it was egregious personally to thank people for
devotion to a cause. However that did not always work out in practice,
naturally.
Once a woman, a volunteer, who had worked all the morning reported to
Alice Paul at noon. She retailed what she had done. Alice Paul made no
comment whatever, but asked her immediately if she would go downtown for
her. The woman refused; went away and did not come back. Alice Paul
asked a friend for an explanation of her absence. “She is offended,” her
friend explained. “You did not thank her for what she did.” “But,”
exclaimed Alice Paul, “she did not do it for me. She did it for
Suffrage. I thought she would be delighted to do it for Suffrage.” After
that, however, Alice Paul tried very hard to remember to thank
everybody. Once a party member said to her, as she was leaving
Headquarters, “I have a taxi here, Miss Paul—can’t I take you anywhere?”
“No,” Alice Paul answered abruptly. She was halfway down the stairs when
she seemed to remember something. Instantly she turned back and said,
“Thank you!” Another time, somebody else announced that she was offended
because Alice Paul had not thanked her, and was going to leave. A friend
went to Alice Paul.
“Mrs. Blank is leaving us. I am afraid you have offended her.”
“Where is she?” Alice Paul demanded, “I will apologize at once.”
“For what?” the friend inquired.
“I don’t know,” Alice Paul answered, “_anything_!”
Like Roosevelt, Alice Paul had a remarkable news sense. She was the joy
of newspaper men. Ninety per cent of the Woman’s Party bulletins got
publicity as against about twenty per cent of others. A New Orleans
editor said they were the best publicity organization in the country.
Gilson Gardner compares her to a Belasco, staging the scene admirably
but, herself, always in the background.
Later, when the first stress was over, her companions spoke of the joy
of work with her. They marveled at that creative quality which made her
put over her demonstrations on so enormous a scale and the beauty with
which she inundated them.
Maud Younger tells of going with her one night to the Capitol steps,
when she painted imaginatively, on the scene which lay outstretched
before her, the great demonstration which she was planning: wide areas
of static color here, long lines of pulsating color there, laid on in
great splashes and welts, like a painter of the modern school. Above
all, her companions took a fearful joy in the serene way in which she
brushed aside red tape, ignored rules. She would decide on some
unexpected, daring bit of pioneer demonstration. Her companions would
report to her regarding restrictions. “What an absurd rule,” she would
remark, and then proceed calmly to ignore it. “Oh, Miss Paul, we _can’t_
do that!” was the commonest exclamation with which the fellow workers
greeted her plans. But always they did do it because she convinced them
that it could be done. After the death of Inez Milholland, Alice Paul
decided to hold a memorial service in Statuary Hall at the Capitol.
“Oh, Miss Paul, we can’t do that! Memorial services are held there only
for those whose statues are in the Hall.” But in the end she did it.
When her Committee spoke about it to the officials who have Statuary
Hall in charge they said, “One thing we cannot permit. You cannot go up
into the gallery because the doors open from that gallery into rooms
containing old and valued books and those books might be stolen.” The
police said, “No, you must not hang curtains over those openings in case
a Senator wants to pass through.” Later the police themselves were
helping Alice Paul to place the purple, white, and gold pennants about
the gallery; they themselves were piling around their standards, in
order to hold them straight, those same old and valued books; they
themselves were standing on stepladders to help her hang curtains before
those unsealable openings.
When the Suffrage Special returned, Alice Paul decided to hold a
welcoming banquet in the dining-room of the beautiful new Washington
railroad station. She sent somebody to ask this privilege of the
authorities. At first, of course, they said, no, but in the end, of
course, they said, yes. The Woman’s Party hired a band to help in the
welcome. Alice Paul observed that the man who played the horn was so
tall that he obscured an important detail in the decoration. She asked
him to stand in another part of the band group. Of course he answered
that that was impossible, that the horn always stood where he was
standing, but in the end, of course, he stood where Alice Paul told him
to stand.
Late in the history of the Woman’s Party, somebody discovered that Alice
Paul had never seen an anti-Suffragist. At a legislative hearing during
ratification they pointed out one to her—a beautiful one. “She looks
like a Botticelli,” Alice Paul said—and gazed admiringly at her for the
rest of the hearing.
Her companions marveled, I reiterate, at Alice Paul’s creative power.
That did not manifest itself in demonstrations alone. Her policy had
creative quality. It had a wide sweep. It moved on wings and with
accumulating force and speed. Her work in Washington started slowly,
though with sureness of attack, but all the time it heightened and
deepened. From 1913 to 1919 it never faltered. Sometimes changes in
outside affairs made changes in her self-evolved plan, but they never
stopped it, never even slowed it. From the beginning she saw her
objective clearly; and always she made for it. Activities that may often
have seemed to the callow-minded but the futile militancy of a group of
fanatics were part of a perfectly co-ordinated plan. Moreover, she had
always reserve ideas and always a buried ace. Sapient members of the
Party—those who were close to her—believe that she used only a part of
an enormous scheme; that she was prepared far into the future and for
any possible contingency. They wonder sometimes how far that creative
impulse reached ... what form it would later ... and later ... and later
have taken. Yet she proceeded slowly, giving every new form of agitation
its chance; prudent always of her reserves. The instant one kind of
demonstration exhausted its usefulness, she moved to the next. She
wasted no time on side issues, on petty hostilities, on rivalries with
other organizations.
But the quality that, above all, informed her other qualities, the
quality that she first of all brought to the Suffrage situation, the
quality that made her associates regard her with a kind of awe, was her
political-mindedness, and political-mindedness was not at all uncommon
in the Woman’s Party. It was, perhaps, its main asset, although
initiative and efficiency, speed, and courage of the most daring order
marked it. But Alice Paul’s political-mindedness had quality as well as
quantity. When Hughes was made the Republican nominee for the 1916
election, Alice Paul asked him to declare for National Suffrage. He was
exceedingly dubious. It is obvious that, in asking favors of a
politician, it is necessary to prove to him that action on his part will
not hurt him in the matter of votes and may help him. On this point,
Alice Paul said in effect:
“Your Party consists of two factions, the old, stand-pat Republicans and
the Progressives. Now, if you put a Suffrage plank in your platform, you
will not alienate the Progressives, because the Progressives have a
Suffrage plank, and the old stand-pat Republicans will not vote for a
Democrat no matter what you put in your platform.”
When in the same election campaign Hughes went West, and the West turned
to Wilson, it became evident, however much the Woman’s Party diminished
the prestige of Wilson, it could not defeat him. Numerous advisers
suggested to Alice Paul to withdraw her speakers from the campaign.
Alice Paul answered, “_No; if we withdraw our speakers from the
campaign, we withdraw the issue from the campaign._ The main thing is to
make the Suffrage Amendment a national issue that the Democrats will not
want to meet in another campaign.”
After the election, somebody said to her, “The people of the United
States generally think you made a great mistake in fighting Wilson. They
think your campaign a failure.” Alice Paul answered, “In this case, it
is not important what the people think _but what the Democratic leaders
know_.”
The most magical thing about Alice Paul’s political-mindedness was,
however, a quality which is almost indescribable. Perhaps it should be
symbolized by some term of the fourth dimension—although Helena Hill
Weed’s happy word “prescience” comes near to describing it. Maud Younger
gives an extraordinary example of this. She says again and again,
lobbyists would come back from the Capitol with the news of some
unexpected manœuver which perplexed or even blocked them. Congressmen,
themselves, would be puzzled over the situation. Again and again, she
has seen Alice Paul walk to the window, stand there, head bent,
thinking. Then, suddenly she would come back. She had seen behind the
veil of conflicting and seemingly untranslatable testimony. She had, in
Maud Younger’s own words, cloven “straight to the heart of things.”
Often her lobbyists had the experience of explaining to baffled members
of Committees in Congress the concealed tactics of their own Committee.
* * * * *
It was small wonder that they were so busy at Headquarters during those
first months. They were preparing for a monster demonstration in the
shape of a procession which was to occur on March 3, 1913, on the eve of
President Wilson’s first inauguration. That procession, which was really
a thing of great beauty, brought Suffrage into prominence in a way the
Suffragists had not for an instant anticipated. About eight thousand
women took part. The procession started from the Capitol, marched up
Pennsylvania Avenue past the White House and ended in a mass-meeting at
the Hall of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Although a permit
had been issued for the procession, and though this carried with it the
right to the street, the police failed to protect the marchers as had
been rumored they would. The end of the Avenue was almost impassable to
the parade. A huge crowd, drawn from all over the country, had appeared
in Washington for the Inauguration festivities. They chose to act in the
most rowdy manner possible and many of the police chose to seem
oblivious of what they were doing. Disgraceful episodes occurred.
Secretary of War Stimson had finally to send for troops from Fort Meyer.
There was an investigation of the action of the police by a Committee of
the Senate. The official report is a thick book containing testimony
that will shock any fine-minded American citizen. Ultimately, the Chief
of Police for the District of Columbia was removed.
The investigation, however, kept the Suffrage procession in the minds of
the public for many weeks. It almost over-shadowed the Inauguration
itself.
* * * * *
On this occasion, the banner—in a slightly modified form to be
afterwards always known as the Great Demand banner—was carried for the
first time. This banner marched peremptorily through the history of the
Woman’s Party until the Suffrage Amendment was passed. It said:
WE DEMAND AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE
UNITED STATES ENFRANCHISING THE WOMEN OF THE COUNTRY.
On March 3 there arrived in Washington a man who was that day a simple
citizen of the United States. The next day he was to become the
President of the United States. As Woodrow Wilson drove from the station
through the empty streets to his hotel, he asked, “Where are the
people?”
The answer was, “Over on the Avenue watching the Suffrage Parade.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
V
MAKING THE FEDERAL AMENDMENT AN ISSUE
THE first great demonstration of the Congressional Committee—the
procession of March 3—had been designed to attract the eye of the
country to the Suffragists. It succeeded beyond their wildest hopes.
Thereafter it became a part of the policy of the Congressional
Committee—later, the Congressional Union, and later still, the National
Woman’s Party—to keep the people watching the Suffragists. The main work
of the Congressional Committee, however, focussed directly on Congress,
as of course Congress alone could pass a Constitutional Amendment. They
appealed to Congress constantly, by different methods, and through
different avenues. They appealed to Congress through the President of
the United States, through political leaders, through constituents. It
is one way of describing their system to say that they worked on
Congress by a series of electric shocks delivered to it downwards from
the President, and by a constant succession of waves delivered upwards
through the people. This pressure never ceased for a moment. It
accumulated in power as the six years of this work went on.
* * * * *
When President Wilson arrived in Washington for his inauguration, the
first thing brought to his notice was Suffrage agitation. The
Congressional Committee thereafter kept Suffrage constantly before him.
If not actually opposed to Suffrage in 1913, Woodrow Wilson had every
appearance of opposition; certainly he was utterly indifferent to it.
But Alice Paul believed that he was amenable to education on the
subject, and she proceeded to educate him. Her theory proved to be true,
but the process took longer than she had anticipated. Her methods of
course aroused storms of criticism; but in the end they triumphed. The
President’s action during the six years’ siege was the attitude of all
politicians. That is to say, for a long time he made general statements
of a vaguely encouraging nature to the Suffragists, but for a long time
he actually did nothing. Every accepted method of convincing him of the
justice of the cause was tried. Deputation after deputation waited on
him and stated their case. Then he began to move. He came out for Woman
Suffrage as a principle; he voted for it in New Jersey but he still
believed that the enfranchisement of woman must come by States. In 1917,
his position, except for these minor admissions, was exactly that of
1913. As far as the Suffrage Amendment was concerned, he had not budged
an inch. The Woman’s Party then tried desperate remedies and afterward
more and more desperate remedies. These always produced results—towards
the end, _immediate_ results. But at the beginning of this period, the
Suffragists found that the instant they relaxed, the President relaxed;
his attention departed from Suffrage. This always happened. Then the
Congressional Committee began to exert a little more pressure, and the
President’s attention came back to Suffrage. In the long attacking
process to which Alice Paul subjected him, she put him in untenable
position after untenable position. He moved from each one of them by
some new concession. In the end, he himself procured the last vote
necessary to pass the Amendment in the Senate.
Alice Paul admires Woodrow Wilson profoundly. She admires his powers of
leadership; his ideals; his persistence; his steadfastness; his
resolution. “He is a man,” she says, “who considers one thing at a time.
Suffrage was not in his thought at all until we, ourselves, injected it
there. And it was not in the center of his thought until the picketing
was well along.” She believed always that, when the President was made
to think that he must act in regard to Suffrage, he would put it
through.
Immediately after his inauguration, President Wilson announced that a
special session of Congress would be called on April 7. At once the
Congressional Committee decided to bring to his attention the fact that
there was no subject which more urgently demanded treatment in this
session than Woman Suffrage. Three deputations were therefore organized
to ask him to recommend the Federal Amendment in the message by which he
should convene this special session. These deputations—and all
subsequent ones—were organized by Alice Paul.
The first deputation waited on President Wilson on March 17. This
deputation consisting of four women was led by Alice Paul herself.
Although individual Suffragists had interviewed previous presidents,
this was the first deputation which had ever appeared with a request for
action before a President of the United States. President Wilson’s reply
to their remarks was that the subject would receive his most careful
attention.
The episode was one of the most amusing of the early history of the
Congressional Committee. The President received the deputation in the
White House offices. When they entered, they found four chairs arranged
in a row with one in front of them, like a class about to be addressed
by a teacher. The atmosphere was so tense that all the women felt it and
were frightened. Alice Paul spoke first and said that women wanted
Suffrage considered by Congress at once, as the most important issue
before the country. All spoke in turn. One woman was so terrified that
she petrified when her turn came. “Don’t be nervous,” the President
reassured her and she finally proceeded. To this first group the
President made the statement that so astounded Suffragists all over the
country—that Suffrage had never been brought to his attention, that the
matter was entirely new. He added that he did not know his position and
would like all information possible on the subject.
The Congressional Committee gave him time to give the subject this
careful attention, and then a second deputation waited on the President
on March 28 to furnish him with the information he lacked. This
deputation was led by Elsie Hill, and it represented the College Equal
Suffrage League. The President replied to their remarks that this
session of Congress would be so occupied with the tariff and the
currency that the Suffrage measure could not be considered.
A third deputation waited on the President on March 31. It was led by
Dr. Cora Smith King, and it was composed of influential members of the
National Council of Women Voters. This delegation told the President
that the women voters, who numbered approximately two million, were much
interested in the proposed Suffrage Amendment. They also asked him to
recommend it in his message. His reply to them was the same as to the
college women: that this special session would be so occupied with the
tariff and currency that the Suffrage measure could not be considered.
In the meantime, the Congressional Committee had notified Suffragists
all over the United States that a Suffrage Amendment would be introduced
in this special session of Congress; asking them to urge the President
to indorse Suffrage in his forthcoming message; and to request their
Representative in Congress to support Suffrage when it was introduced.
Letters poured into Washington from the remotest corners of the country.
This was the beginning of that intimacy which the Congressional
Committee—afterwards the Congressional Union, afterwards the National
Woman’s Party—established with its sympathizers and members all over the
country. In the nature of things—the political situation being
changeable, and demanding always subtle, delicate, and often swift and
decisive handling—the actual work at Washington had to be planned and
executed by a limited number. But those few must be able, forceful, and
swiftly executive spirits. Their adherents all over the country were
however kept as closely and constantly as possible in touch with that
changing situation.
In addition, the Congressional Committee did all possible preliminary
work with the incoming members of this Congress. The result on the
Progressive members was encouraging. Although there was a Woman Suffrage
Committee in the Senate, there was none in the House. Thitherto, the
Suffrage question had been sent to the Judiciary Committee, the
graveyard of the House. As a result of the work of the Congressional
Committee, the Progressive Caucus, which met before the new Congress
assembled, gave its unqualified indorsement to the proposal to create a
Woman Suffrage Committee in the House. The Congressional Committee
canvassed the Democratic members of the House and urged them to take
similar action. The Democratic Caucus, however, entirely ignored the
question.
Having brought Suffrage to the attention of the new President by the
monster procession of March 3, the Congressional Committee proceeded to
bring it to the attention of the new Congress by a second great
demonstration. This was in support of the Federal Amendment, and it took
place on the opening day of the special session of the Sixty-third
Congress, April 7, 1913. Delegates from each of the 435 Congressional
districts in the United States assembled at Washington, bringing
petitions from the men and women of their districts, asking for the
passing of the Amendment. After the mass-meeting, the delegates marched,
each behind her State banner, to the doors of Congress. The procession
was greeted at the steps of the Capitol by a group of Congressmen. One
of them welcomed the petitioners in a speech pledging his support to
their cause. They then led the delegation into the Rotunda, where a long
receiving line of members of Congress repeated his welcome. The
Suffragists took places which had been set aside for them in the
galleries of the Senate and the House and watched the presentation of
the petitions.
Immediately after the petitions were presented, Representative Mondell
(Republican) of Wyoming, and Senator Chamberlain (Democrat) of Oregon
introduced the Suffrage Amendment. In the Senate this resolution was
referred to the Woman’s Suffrage Committee, and in the House to the
Judiciary Committee. Named, as is customary, after those who introduced
it, the measure was known first as the Chamberlain-Mondell Amendment,
and later as the Bristow-Mondell Amendment. It was in reality the famous
Susan B. Anthony Amendment—first introduced into Congress in 1878 by
Senator Sargent of California—exactly as she drew it up. The Anthony
Amendment runs as follows:
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall
not be denied or abridged by any State on account of sex.