Section 2. Congress shall have power, by appropriate legislation, to

enforce the provisions of this article.

The National Woman’s Party, convinced that the enfranchisement of

women is the paramount issue, pledges itself to use its united vote

to secure the passage of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment,

irrespective of the interests of any national political Party, and

pledges its unceasing opposition to all who oppose this Amendment.

Sara Bard Field closed that first meeting with an eloquent invocation to

the spirit of freedom, quoting from Alfred Wallace the words he used

just before his death:

All my long life and investigations have shown me that there is one

supreme force needed in the universe for growth, either material or

spiritual, physical or mental—and that force is freedom.

An evening session of the Woman’s Party Convention, held also at the

Blackstone Theatre, was made interesting and picturesque by the presence

of representatives of all the political Parties.

The Convention appointed women representing the Woman’s Party, to speak

at the Republican, Democratic, and Progressive Conventions.

Incidental to the Convention a big “Suffrage First” luncheon was given

in the Auditorium Hotel. So many hundreds of applicants for tickets had

to be refused that finally tickets of admission for standing room were

sold. Every inch of steps was occupied when the luncheon began.

Remarkable speeches were made by Rheta Childe Dorr, the famous

publicist, and one of the early editors of the _Suffragist_; by Crystal

Eastman, one of the founders of the Congressional Union, brilliant

speaker, writer, and editor; Inez Milholland Boissevain, who, before the

year was out, was to end, with such tragic abruptness, a vivid and

devoted life; Helen Keller, whose unexampled achievement is known to the

whole world.

The publicity which the Woman’s Party received was extraordinary. The

Convention lasted three days and the meetings were packed. Arthur

Brisbane pointed out the difference between the clock-like organization

of the women and the hap-hazard organization of the men.

Ida M. Tarbell, describing the Woman’s Party in the _New York World_ of

June 7 and 8, 1916, says:

The new Woman’s Party had permitted representation of five different

political Parties to appear before them and briefly present their

various claims to the Suffrage of women. “We do not ask you here to

tell us what we can do for your Parties, but what your Parties can

do for us,” Miss Martin told the speakers in a tone of exultant

sweetness which sent a cheer from shore to shore of the human sea

that filled the house....

“Votes don’t matter,” Benson shouted at them, “nothing but education

matters. Women, like men, don’t know how to vote. Nevertheless, if

you have nothing but ignorance you have a right to contribute that.

As for the Socialists, we shall continue to vote for Suffrage, as we

always have done, if no women vote for us.”

Much as they gasped at Benson’s defiance of their “power,” they took

it like sports, and sent him to his seat with rounds of cheers and

long waving of their lovely banners. (They have a wonderful eye for

color, these new politicians.)

But when Mr. Hammond—confident and bland—assured them the Republican

Party offered them protection from invaders, they jeered at him. He

did not understand that they are their own protectors and war scares

are not going to stampede them.

Another thing that the gentlemen must have noticed—used as they are

to the same game—and that was, that no amount of eloquence made the

faintest scratch on the rock-ribbed determination of the women. The

one and only thing they wanted to know, so the women told the men

after they had gone through their ordeals, was whether or no they

proposed to support the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. That was the

only possible interest they had in what the gentlemen could say. Was

it, yes or no?

The Republican and Progressive Conventions began in Chicago the day the

Woman’s Party Convention ended. The delegates elected by the women spoke

before the Resolution Committee of both these Conventions.

The hearing before the Republicans was held in the vast Coliseum.

Representatives of the National American Woman Suffrage Association

addressed the Committee. Anti-Suffragists followed. In closing, their

last speaker said:

“We will now leave you to the tender mercies of those who demand.”

The Woman’s Party then took the hearing in charge.

The hearing of the Woman’s Party before the Progressive Convention was

held at eight o’clock the same evening in the South Parlor of the

Auditorium Hotel.

Later, members of the Woman’s Party went to St. Louis where the

Democrats were holding their Convention. When they arrived they found

there was no room in the hotel which could be used for Headquarters.

Most of them, a little discouraged, went in to breakfast. While they sat

at the table, a newspaper man approached. “Where are your Headquarters?”

he asked. “Here,” Alice Paul answered instantly. After breakfast she

chose a table in a conspicuous part of the hotel lobby; covered it with

Woman’s Party literature, hung a purple, white, and gold banner back of

it. The hotel, seething with the activity due to the fact that

Democratic Headquarters was there, took no notice of what she was doing.

Nobody said anything to her. Gradually Alice Paul hung purple, white,

and gold banners everywhere in that corner of the lobby. Nobody

remonstrated. Perhaps by this time, the hotel authorities decided that

her color scheme was decorative. At any rate, the Woman’s Party

maintained that corner as Headquarters. It was a conspicuous spot;

everybody had to pass it to go to the elevator. They could not have

hired a place so advantageously situated.

Newspaper cartoonists began to introduce the new Party into their

pictures. Alice Paul in the figure of a little deer, big-eyed and

wistful, stood timidly among a group which included the elephant, the

donkey and the bull moose.

The Woman’s Party found every sentiment in favor of Suffrage among the

Democratic delegates until Secretary of War Baker arrived from

Washington bringing the platform drawn up by Wilson. Then the atmosphere

changed. Newspaper men, who told the Woman’s Party delegates of the

encouraging condition earlier, now said: “There is no chance of getting

what you want.”

When later the Resolutions Committee met, representatives from the

Woman’s Party waited all night outside the door in a last effort to

influence the members of the Committee going in and out of the Committee

Rooms. The entire platform was accepted, with very slight changes, as it

had been originally drafted in Washington. It contained a recommendation

that the question of Woman Suffrage be confined to the States.

The Progressives endorsed National Suffrage. This was the first time a

national political Party had ever endorsed the Federal Amendment; for

although the Progressives, the Socialists, and the Prohibitionists had

endorsed the principle of Suffrage in 1912, they had apparently never

heard of the principle of Federal Suffrage. The platforms of the other

two Parties were unsatisfactory as far as the Federal Amendment was

concerned.

The Republican Suffrage plank was:

The Republican Party, reaffirming its faith in a government of the

people, by the people, and for the people, as a measure of justice

to one-half the adult population of this country, favors the

extension of Suffrage to women, but recognizes the right of each

State to settle this question for itself.

The Democratic Suffrage plank ran:

We recommend the extension of the franchise to the women of the

country by the States upon the same terms as to men.

These two planks also marked a great advance; for it was the first time

the major political Parties had ever mentioned Suffrage.

Now every effort of the Woman’s Party was directed to getting the

Presidential candidates, Wilson and Hughes, to come out for National

Suffrage.

Alice Paul’s campaign, conducted on Hughes, was particularly vigorous.

It was nation-wide in its extent. She sent telegrams all over the

country asking people to urge this upon him. She sent numberless women

to plead with Hughes. She sent women to Roosevelt and to other prominent

Republicans and Progressives to get them to use their influence with

Hughes. Every Republican member of Congress was lobbied to write to

Hughes or to see him.

Hughes found himself bombarded. Letters inundated him from all over the

nation. Newspapers besieged him with editorials. Most important of all,

Alice Paul herself went to him. Then it was that she presented an

unanswerable argument which has already been quoted.

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.

At a great mass-meeting in Carnegie Hall, Hughes accepted the

nomination. He did not, however, satisfactorily mention Woman Suffrage.

That evening an unknown man came up to the box where Alice Paul was

sitting and introducing himself as Hughes’s representative, asked her

what she thought of the program. “Utterly unsatisfactory,” said Alice

Paul; “it did not mention Federal Suffrage.” That night Alice Paul and

other Suffragists went early to the public reception given to Hughes at

the Hotel Astor. They told every Senator, Congressman, and plain

individual whom they knew there: “When you congratulate Mr. Hughes, tell

him how disappointed you were that he did not mention Federal Suffrage.”

In a telegram sent on August 1 to Senator Sutherland of Utah, Hughes

declared himself in favor of the Federal Amendment. It was the first

time any Presidential candidate of either of the two big political

Parties had publicly declared the Federal Amendment a part of his

policy.

* * * * *

On June 19, President Wilson sent to Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, president

of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, the following

letter, which is a reply to a telegram from her asking what the Suffrage

plank in the Democratic platform meant:

MY DEAR MRS. CATT:

I was away from the city and did not get your telegram of June

sixteenth promptly.

I am very glad to make my position about the Suffrage plank adopted

by the convention clear to you, though I had not thought that it was

necessary to state again a position I have repeatedly stated with

entire frankness. The plank received my entire approval before its

adoption and I shall support its principle with sincere pleasure. I

wish to join my fellow-Democrats in recommending to the several

States that they extend the Suffrage to women upon the same terms as

to men.

Cordially and sincerely yours,

WOODROW WILSON.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

VI

STILL MORE PRESSURE ON THE PRESIDENT

ON June 12, 1916, Sara Bard Field sent a telegram to President Wilson.

Mrs. Field was a Democrat, but she was, first of all, a Suffragist. In

that telegram, she urged the President to support the Suffrage

Amendment. She promised, if the Democratic Party would do this, that she

herself would gladly campaign for him in the Western States without

remuneration. She promised him also the services of at least five other

influential Democratic women. The President answered:

DEAR MRS. FIELD:

Your frank and kindly telegram of June 12 sent from St. Louis was

warmly appreciated. I have been in frequent conference with my Party

associates about a platform declaration with regard to Woman

Suffrage and sincerely hope the outcome has been acceptable to you.

In haste, with sincerest appreciation,

Cordially yours,

WOODROW WILSON.

On June 21, President Wilson received Mrs. D. E. Hooker of Richmond, who

came to him as a delegate from the Virginia Federation of Labor. Mrs.

Hooker placed in the President’s hands resolutions passed by the

Federation, demanding favorable action on the Federal Amendment this

session.

“This is very strong,” said President Wilson.

The _Suffragist_ of July 1 says:

Mrs. Hooker then urged upon the President, very movingly, the

humiliation, from the standpoint of a Southerner and a woman, of

going before the entire population of men now enfranchised, and

begging them each personally to approve of woman’s right to full

citizenship. Tears came into her eyes as she spoke, and the

President seemed rather touched. He said consolingly that she must

not mind the criticism she encountered in a good work. “Every one in

the public eye,” the President said, “is deluged with criticism. You

simply must do what you believe to be right.”

Mrs. Hooker went on to explain the political difficulties of the

State by State road to National Woman Suffrage.

President Wilson seemed very little impressed by these facts. “Every

good thing,” he said, “takes a great deal of hard work.”

Mrs. Hooker made a very strong point of the indefensible behavior of

the House Judiciary Committee in blocking the Suffrage Amendment and

refusing to allow the representatives of the people an opportunity

to vote upon it. “Whatever one may think of Woman Suffrage,” she

said, “tying the Amendment up this way before an election is wrong;

and the blame will fall squarely on the Democratic Party.”

“You must see the members of the Judiciary Committee about that,”

said the President, with a considerable tactical skill. “I do not

think I should interfere with the action of a Committee of

Congress.”

“Have you never done it before, Mr. President?” asked Mrs. Hooker.

The President explained that he had done it only under pressure of a

national emergency.

The interview lasted about half an hour. The President’s manner was

kindly and friendly, but he made it very plain that he interpreted

the Democratic platform plank to mean the limitation of the Suffrage

movement to State activities, and that he was still opposed to the

Federal Suffrage Amendment.

Later, Mrs. Field replied to the President’s letter:

I am sorry to have to tell you that not only is the platform

declaration not acceptable to me, and to hundreds of thousands of

voting women of the West, but that we also greatly deprecate the

interpretation which you gave of this plank to Mrs. D. E. Hooker of

Richmond.

It is my sincere hope as a Democratic woman that you will not allow

any menace to the Democratic Party in the fall election through your

unwillingness to face the desire of the West for speedy action upon

the Susan B. Anthony Amendment.

On July 3, a delegation representing the Woman’s National Democratic

League, composed, according to the _Washington Times_, of some of the

most distinguished ladies of the Congressional and official sets, went

to inform the President that the League had raised a thousand dollars as

a contribution towards his re-election. Afterwards, Mrs. F. B. Moran, a

grand-niece of Martha Washington, and it may be almost unnecessary to

state, a member of the Congressional Union, requested a five minute

interview with the President.

Mrs. Moran said:

I am really afraid for my Party. The women in the West are far

superior to us. They have power, and they know how to use it. There

are four million of them, and they are heartily in favor of the

Federal Suffrage Amendment because they do not wish to be

disfranchised when they pass beyond the limits of their own State.

It is not a question of their threatening us. It is a question of

our realizing what they are going to do. You can get the Suffrage

Amendment through Congress, and, if you do not do it, these women

will regard you as responsible.

President Wilson said, in answer, that he could not interfere with the

action of Congress. He believed that Suffrage should be established on

the secure foundation of separate State action. “You should work from

the bottom up, not from the top down,” the President said. “Women should

be patient, and continue to work in the admirable way they have worked

in the past.”

* * * * *

On July 4, President Wilson reviewed a Labor parade in connection with

the laying of the corner-stone of the Labor Temple of the American

Federation of Labor in Washington, D. C., and at its close he addressed

the marchers. He had just declared that he stood for the interests of

all classes, when Mabel Vernon, who sat on the platform a few feet away,

called in a voice which has a notably clear, ringing quality, “Mr.

President, if you sincerely desire to forward the interests of all the

people, why do you oppose the national enfranchisement of women?”

The President answered, “That is one of the things which we will have to

take counsel over later.”

When the President was closing his speech, Mabel Vernon called again;

“Answer, Mr. President, why do you oppose the national enfranchisement

of women?”

The President did not answer.

The Secret Service men with almost an exquisite courtesy gently hurried

Miss Vernon away.

* * * * *

On July 24, another deputation of prominent Democratic women called on

the President. The deputation included Mrs. George W. Lamont, Harriot

Stanton Blatch, Mina Van Winkle, Helen Todd. I quote the _Suffragist_:

Mrs. Lamont, who introduced the group to President Wilson, said: “I

have come to you, Mr. President, as a Democratic woman. I used to be

first a Democrat and then a Suffragist; now I am a Suffragist

first.” She asked the President if he realized how painful a

position he created for Democratic women when he opposed the

enfranchisement of their sex and forced them to choose between their

Party allegiance and their loyalty to women throughout the nation.

Mrs. Blatch told President Wilson of the strength of the sentiment

for Woman Suffrage she had found in the West on her recent trip in

the Suffrage Special through the equal Suffrage States and of the

extraordinary difficulties she had experienced in her own life

trying to win Suffrage by amending the constitution of her State.

“I am sixty years old, Mr. President,” said Mrs. Blatch, “I have

worked all my life for Suffrage; and I am determined that I will

never again stand up on the street corners of a great city appealing

to every Tom, Dick, and Harry for the right of self-government. When

we work for a Federal Amendment, we are dealing at last with men who

understand what we are talking about and can speak to us in our

tongue. We are not asking for an easy way to win the vote. It is not

easy to amend the United States Constitution. We are asking for a

dignified way; and we ought to be able to rely on the chivalry of

our representatives, particularly of the southern representatives,

to accord to women a self-respecting method of working out their

enfranchisement.”

Miss Helen Todd told the President of her experience in a State

campaign in Texas, when Democratic members of the Legislature

refused to submit the question to the voters, saying bluntly that

they controlled eleven votes in the upper house and that those

eleven could keep the Suffrage Amendment “tied up” indefinitely.

“Women go to Democrats in Congress and are told they must appeal to

State Legislatures. They go to Democratic State Legislatures, who

refuse to allow the electors of their own State to vote upon the

question at all. What are women to do, Mr. President?” said Miss

Todd, “when they are played with in this cat and mouse fashion?”

The interview was in many respects interesting. President Wilson did

not mention the States’ rights formula. He said he was unable to

help the Suffrage Amendment in Congress because his Party was

opposed to it. It was the President’s theory, he explained, that a

Party leader should not go so far in advance of his adherents as to

withdraw himself from them, and make united action impossible upon

the other issues before the country.

The impression was strongly conveyed, however, that this opposition

from the President’s Party was not necessarily permanent. “In four

years, or in two years,” said Mr. Wilson, impressively but vaguely,

“the situation might be different. At present many members of the

Democratic Party are opposed to Woman Suffrage on account of the

negro question.” “But,” said one of his visitors, “if women were

given the vote throughout the United States the percentage of the

white vote to the negro vote would be increased.” “You have not

explained that to the men in Congress,” President Wilson said.

In answer to the statement that the Democratic Party would lose the

support of women in the West and therefore of western electoral

votes if they persisted in opposing women’s national

enfranchisement, President Wilson said he did not believe women

would vote in a national election on the Suffrage issue. “If they

did that,” said Mr. Wilson, with superb and quite unconscious

insolence, “they would not be as intelligent as I think they are.”

The women came away from this meeting convinced that the President would

do nothing for the Federal Amendment.

On September 8, however, President Wilson spoke at Atlantic City before

a Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. It was

the first time he had ever addressed a Suffrage meeting. That was, of

course, in itself, significant. I quote the _Suffragist_:

I have found it a real privilege to be here tonight and to listen to

the address which you have heard. Though you may not all of you

believe it, I would a great deal rather hear some one else speak

than speak myself, but I should feel that I was omitting a duty if I

did not address you tonight and say some of the things that have

been in my thoughts as I realized the approach of this evening and

the duty that would fall upon me.

The astonishing thing about this movement which you represent is not

that it has grown so slowly, but that it has grown so rapidly. No

doubt for those who have been a long time in the struggle, like your

honored president, it seems a long and arduous path that has been

trodden, but when you think of the cumulating force of this movement

in recent decades, you must agree with me that it is one of the most

astonishing tides in modern history.

Two generations ago, no doubt, Madam President will agree with me in

saying it was a handful of women who were fighting this cause. Now

it is a great multitude of women who are fighting it. And there are

some interesting historical connections which I would like to

attempt to point out to you. One of the most striking facts about

the history of the United States is that at the outset it was a

lawyer’s history.

There was a time when nobody but a lawyer could know enough to run

the government of the United States, and a distinguished English

publicist once remarked, speaking of the complexity of the American

government, that it was no proof of the excellence of the American

Constitution that it had been successfully operated, because the

American could run any constitution. But there have been a great

many technical difficulties in running it.

And then something happened. A great question arose in this country

which, though complicated with legal elements, was at the bottom a

human question, and nothing but a question of humanity. That was the

slavery question, and is it not significant that it was then, and

then for the first time, that women became prominent in politics in

America? Not many women. Those prominent in that day are so few that

you can almost name them over in a brief catalogue, but

nevertheless, they then began to play a part in writing not only,

but in public speech, which was a very novel part for women to play

in America; and after the Civil War had settled some of what seemed

the most difficult legal questions of our system, the life of the

nation began not only to unfold but to accumulate.

Life in the United States was a comparatively simple matter at the

time of the Civil War. There was none of that underground struggle

which is now so manifest to those who look only a little way beneath

the surface. Stories such as Dr. Davis has told tonight were

uncommon in those simpler days.

The pressure of low wages, the agony of obscure and unremunerated

toil did not exist in America in anything the same proportions that

they exist now. And as our life has unfolded and accumulated, as the

contacts of it have become hot, as the populations have assembled in

the cities, and the cool spaces of the country have been supplanted

by the feverish urban areas, the whole nature of our political

questions has been altered. They have ceased to be legal questions.

They have more and more become social questions—questions with

regard to the relations of human beings to one another—not merely

their legal relations, but their moral and spiritual relations to

one another.

And this has been most characteristic of American life in the last

few decades, and as these questions have assumed greater and greater

prominence, the movement which this association represents has

gathered cumulative force. So that if anybody asks himself, “What

does this gathering force mean?” if he knows anything about the

history of the country, he knows that it means something that has

not only come to stay, but has come with conquering power.

I get a little impatient sometimes about the discussion of the

channels and methods by which it is to prevail. It is going to

prevail, and that is a very superficial and ignorant view of it

which attributes it to mere social unrest. It is not merely because

the women are discontented. It is because the women have seen

visions of duty, and that is something which we not only cannot

resist, but, if we be true Americans, we do not wish to resist.

So that what we have to realize in dealing with forces of this sort

is that we are dealing with the substance of life itself.

I have felt as I sat here tonight the wholesome contagion of the

occasion. Almost every other time that I ever visited Atlantic City

I came to fight somebody. I hardly know how to conduct myself when I

have not come to fight against anybody, but with somebody. I have

come to suggest, among other things, that when the forces of nature

are steadily working and the tide is rising to meet the moon, you

need not be afraid that it will not come to its flood.

We feel the tide: we rejoice in the strength of it and we shall not

quarrel in the long run as to the method of it. Because, when you

are working with masses of men and organized bodies of opinion, you

have got to carry the organized body along. The whole art and

practice of government consists, not in moving individuals, but in

moving masses. It is all very well to run ahead and beckon, but,

after all, you have got to wait for the mass to follow. I have not

come to ask you to be patient, because you have been, but I have

come to congratulate you that there was a force behind you that

will, beyond any peradventure, be triumphant and for which you can

afford a little while to wait.

This speech is, of course, often exquisitely phrased. However, it

promised nothing. The Woman’s Party was not deceived by it.

* * * * *

It is to be seen that President Wilson was moving—slowly, to be sure;

one cautious foot carefully planted before the other cautious foot

moved—in the right direction. He had progressed a measurable distance

from the man who just after his inauguration admitted he had never

considered the subject of Suffrage. However, he still held to his idea

of the “State by State” progress for the enfranchisement of women. But

he was to change even in that, as will subsequently be seen.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

VII

THE SECOND APPEAL TO WOMEN VOTERS

ON August 10, 11, and 12, of 1916, the newly-formed National Woman’s

Party held a conference at the Hotel Antlers in Colorado Springs, to

formulate a policy for the coming presidential campaign.

In Washington, Senators and Representatives read avidly the newspaper

accounts of this convention.

Politically, it was a tremendously impressive gathering. Prominent women

came from all the Western States to decide how they should endeavor to

mobilize the women’s votes. Greatly alarmed at this drifting away of

members, the Democratic Party sent prominent Democratic women to plead

with them not to leave the Party and to represent to them that Peace was

more important than Suffrage. The Republicans sent important Republican

women to plead with them to give their support to Hughes since he had

come out for the Federal Suffrage Amendment.

Finally the Democratic leaders appealed to the President to counteract

the attacks being made on the Party, on the score of its Suffrage

record. The President, thereupon, despatched to the Thomas Jefferson

Club of Denver the following letter which was read at a banquet the last

day of the Conference.

THE WHITE HOUSE,

WASHINGTON, D. C., August 7, 1916.

MY DEAR FRIENDS:

I wish I could meet you face to face and tell you in person how

deeply I appreciate the work your organization has done and proposes

to do for the cause of democracy and popular government.

I am told that yours was the first woman’s Democratic voters’

organization in America, and I am sure that as such it must have

been the instrument of impressing your convictions very deeply upon

the politics of your State.

One of the strongest forces behind the Equal Suffrage sentiment of

the country is the now demonstrated fact that in the Suffrage States

women interest themselves in public questions, study them

thoroughly, form their opinions and divide as men do concerning

them. It must in frankness be admitted that there are two sides to

almost every important public question, and even the best informed

persons are bound to differ in judgment concerning it. With each

difference in judgment, it is not only natural, but right and

patriotic, that the success of opposing convictions should be sought

through political alignment and the measuring of their strength at

the polls through political agencies. Men do this naturally, and so

do women; though it has required your practical demonstration of it

to convince those who doubted this. In proportion as the political

development of women continues along this line, the cause of Equal

Suffrage will be promoted.

Those who believe in Equal Suffrage are divided into those who

believe that each State should determine for itself when and in what

direction the Suffrage should be extended, and those who believe

that it should be immediately extended by the action of the national

government, by means of an amendment to the Federal Constitution.

Both the great political Parties of the nation have in their recent

platforms favored the extension of Suffrage to women through State

action, and I do not see how their candidates can consistently

disregard these official declarations. I shall endeavor to make the

declaration of my own Party in this matter effectual by every

influence that I can properly and legitimately exercise.

Woman’s part in the progress of the race, it goes without saying, is

quite as important as man’s. The old notion, too, that Suffrage and

service go hand in hand, is a sound one, and women may well appeal

to it, though it has long been invoked against them. The war in

Europe has forever set at rest the notion that nations depend in

time of stress wholly upon their men. The women of Europe are

bearing their full share of war’s awful burden in the daily

activities of the struggle, and more than their share as sufferers.

Their fathers and husbands and sons are fighting and dying in the

trenches; but they have taken up the work on the farms, at the mill,

and in the workshop and counting houses. They bury the dead, care

for the sick and wounded, console the fatherless, and sustain the

constant shock of war’s appalling sacrifices.

From these hideous calamities we in this favored land of ours have

thus far been shielded. I shall be profoundly thankful, if,

consistently with the honor and integrity of the nation, we may

maintain to the end our peaceful relations with the world.

Cordially and sincerely yours,

WOODROW WILSON.

To the officers and members of the Jane Jefferson Club of Colorado.

The Woman’s Party did not care for whom the women cast their protest

vote—Republicans, Socialists, Prohibitionists—they cared only that women

should not vote for the Democrats. They knew if this protest vote was

large enough, whoever was elected would realize that opposition to

Suffrage was inexpedient.

At Colorado Springs the National Woman’s Party passed the following

resolutions:

Resolved that the National Woman’s Party, so long as the opposition

of the Democratic Party continues, pledges itself to use its best

efforts in the twelve States where women vote for President to

defeat the Democratic candidate for President; and in the eleven

States where women vote for members of Congress to defeat the

candidates of the Democratic Party for Congress.

Immediately the campaign began. It was the biggest campaign—the most

important ever waged by the Woman’s Party. A stream of organizers

started for the Western States to prepare the way for the speakers. How

hard, and how long, and how intensively these girl organizers worked

will never be known because, in the very nature of things, there could

be no adequate record of their efforts. Then came a stream of speakers,

relay after relay—convinced, informed, experienced—and inspired. Among

them were Harriot Stanton Blatch, Sara Bard Field, Ida Finney Mackrille,

Mrs. William Kent, Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, Helen Todd, Maud Younger, Rose

Winslow, and Gail Laughlin. The brilliant, beautiful Inez Milholland

Boissevain, doomed soon to die so untimely but so glorious a death, was

appointed special flying envoy to make a twelve mile swing through the

twelve western Equal Suffrage States; to bring to the enfranchised women

of the West an appeal for help from the disfranchised women of the East.

The campaign of 1916 was characterized by the swiftness of attack and

efficiency of method which characterized the campaign of 1914, but it

was carried out on a much larger scale. In Washington, Headquarters

boiled ... bubbled ... seethed....

From Washington there sifted into the West tons of campaign literature:

miles of purple, white, and gold banners; acres of great

across-the-street streamers. In the West itself, Woman’s Party speakers

addressed every kind of meeting known to our civilization: indoor

meetings; outdoor meetings; luncheons; banquets; labor unions; business

men’s organizations; in churches, factories, theatres; at mining camps,

county fairs. They took advantage of impromptu meetings in the streets;

small ready-made meetings at clubs; large advertised mass-meetings. And

Inez Milholland’s activities as a flying envoy—and in that, her last

flight she did fly—were the climax of it all.

The slogan of the Wilson party was, “He kept us out of war.” The slogan

of the Woman’s Party developed, “He kept us out of Suffrage.”

The Democrats, remembering the results of the campaign of 1914, were far

from indulgent of this small army, the members of which were all

generals.

In Denver, Elsie Hill the Woman’s Party organizer was arrested and

hurried to the police station in a patrol wagon. The only charge against

her was that she had distributed literature telling the Democratic

record on Suffrage.

In Colorado Springs, the Federal Amendment banner was “arrested” and

locked up for the night in jail.

In Chicago, described by the _Chicago Tribune_ as the “pivotal point of

the 1916 election,” this hostility was much more violent. The day that

Wilson spoke there a hundred women, some of them carrying inscribed

banners, stationed themselves at the entrance to the auditorium where he

was to appear. They were attacked by groups of men, who tore their

banners out of their hands, and demolished them. Several women were

thrown to the ground, and one, still clinging to the banner, was dragged

across the street.

This was followed by an attack upon Minnie E. Brooke, one of the Woman’s

Party speakers. She was alone, walking quietly down Michigan Boulevard.

She had a small purple, white, and gold flag in her hand, and was

wearing the regalia of the Woman’s Party. Suddenly two men darted up to

her, and tried to tear her colors away. In the struggle she was thrown

down and would have fallen in front of an automobile had not a hotel

employee run to her assistance.

However, in the out-of-way country places in the Western States, the

Woman’s Party speakers were received with that hearty hospitality, that

instant and instinctive chivalry, which marks the West. In this

campaign, they made a point of appearing in the State and County Fairs

which characterized the late summer and early fall months.

On Frontier Day, at the Douglas County Grange at Castle Rock, Colorado,

Elsie Hill spoke—to a grandstand crowded with people—between the end of

the relay race (in which the riders changed horses and saddles) and the

beginning of the steer-roping contest. On the stand were massed men,

women, and children. Just over the fence crowded hundreds of cowboys and

farmers.

Street processions also characterized this campaign. At night in Salt

Lake City occurred an extraordinary parade—a river of yellow. The squad

of mounted policemen who headed the procession wore the purple, white,

and gold regalia of the Woman’s Party. Marching women carried lighted

yellow Japanese lanterns. The people who filled the automobiles carried

yellow lanterns. The huge Amendment banner was yellow. Yellow banners

were strung across the streets.

Billboards and posters appeared everywhere which adjured voters not to

support Wilson or any Democratic candidates for Congress. In Tucson and

Prescott, Arizona, these great banners were surreptitiously cut down. In

California, the Democrats placed counter placards beside these

disturbing posters. In San Francisco, armed patrols guarded the two

conflicting posters in one hotel lobby.

The Woman’s Party speakers took advantage of all kinds of situations. In

one town, Maud Younger found that a circus had arrived just ahead of

her. There was no adequate hall for a meeting; and so the circus men

offered her their tent; they even megaphoned her meeting for her. In

another town, a County Fair was being held. Maud Younger appealed to the

clowns to give her a chance to speak, and they let her have their

platform and the spot-light while they were changing costumes. In San

Francisco, Hazel Hunkins scattered thousands of leaflets from an

aeroplane flying over the city. Red Lodge, Montana, sent to the train,

which brought Abby Scott Baker to them, a delegation of members of the

Grand Army of the Republic, the leader bearing a large American flag.

They conducted her in state through the town to the hall where she was

to speak.

Perhaps no campaign was more interesting than that of Rose Winslow in

Arizona. Vivian Pierce, whose experienced newspaper hand on the

_Suffragist_ helped to make that paper the success it so swiftly became,

thus describes her work:

Rose Winslow represented the workers. She spoke for the exploited

women in Eastern industry. In her own person to her audiences she

typified her story of those imprisoned in factories and slums,

unable to fight their own battles. Her words had the authenticity of

an inspired young evangelist. She herself had come up out of that

darkness; and the men of the mines and lumber camps, the women of

the remote Arizona towns, listened to her with tears pouring down

their faces. One does not see Eastern audiences so moved. At Winslow

... this girl, pleading for working women, the most exploited class

in industry, appealed to the men of the great Santa Fé railroad

shops that animate the life of that remote region on the edge of the

“Painted Desert.” Rose Winslow had been warned that if she spoke at

this town, she would be “mobbed” by the Wilson Democrats. After her

impassioned story, told one noon hour, the men of the shops crowded

around this young woman from the East, “one of our own people,” as

one man said, and asked her what they could do for the women of the

East....

In the remote copper camps around Jerome and Bisbee, the story of

the industrial workers who have merely asked for a chance to help

themselves, made a deep impression on the foreign-born voters of

this section. There were Poles, Finns, and Lithuanians in the great

audience held in that copper town that is the working-man’s annex to

Bisbee. That audience both laughed and cried with Rose Winslow, and

then crowded around to greet her in her own language.

From the vividly colored fastness of the miners’ villages in this

wild mountain region, to border towns like Nogales, though but a

short step geographically, the temper and character of the cities

change.... In places like Nogales, the soldiers who could not go

home to vote turned the Woman’s Party meetings into near-riots, so

anxious were these victims of a peace administration to hear what

the ladies had to say about Wilson. The soldiers registered their

approval by helping take up collections, though even the provost

guard could not remove them to give space to citizens able to

register their protests.

An event equally picturesque marked the closing of the campaign on the

night of Sunday, November 5, on the platform of the Blackstone Theatre,

Chicago. There, Harriot Stanton Blatch, acting as the spokesman of the

disfranchised women of the East, called up by long-distance telephone a

series of mass-meetings, one in each of the twelve Suffrage States and

repeated their message—a final appeal to the women voters of the West to

cast their ballots on the following Tuesday against President Wilson.

* * * * *

The result of the election is summed up in the _Suffragist_ of November

11:

In Illinois, the only State where the vote of women is counted

separately, over seventy thousand more women voted against Mr.

Wilson than for him....

The reports indicate that the Woman’s Party campaign was as

successful in holding the woman’s vote in line in the other eleven

States as in Illinois. While ten of these States went for Wilson,

they did not do so, as has been claimed, by the woman’s vote. Mr.

Wilson received in these States almost the solid Labor vote, the

Progressive, and the farmer’s vote. The popular majority which Mr.

Wilson received in the twelve Suffrage States amounted only to

twenty-two thousand one hundred seventy-one out of a popular vote,

according to the latest returns, of more than four million, eight

hundred and ten thousand in the same States. This does not include

the Socialist and Prohibition vote, which was very heavy in some of

the Western States....

We were not concerned with the result of the election. Ours was a

campaign in which it made no difference who was elected. We did not

endorse any candidate. We did not care who won. We were not

pro-Republican, pro-Socialist, pro-Prohibition—we were simply

pro-woman. We did not endeavor to affect the result in the

non-Suffrage States. What we did try to do was to organize a protest

vote by women against Mr. Wilson’s attitude towards Suffrage. This

we did. Every Democrat who campaigned in the West knows this. The

Democratic campaign in the West soon consisted almost entirely of an

attempt to combat the Woman’s Party attack.

Tribute to the strength of the Woman’s Party campaign is contained in

the remark of a woman who had in charge the campaign of the Democratic

women voters. Out of six leaflets which her organization got out, five

were on the subject of Suffrage. A reporter remonstrated with her in

regard to Suffrage not being an issue in the West. She agreed with him,

but, she added, “We have to combat the Woman’s Party.”

The whole Western campaign of the Republicans was conducted as if they

were assured of victory. In many cases the organizers of the Woman’s

Party told the Republicans in the East that they were going to lose in

certain districts. “Nonsense,” laughed the Republicans, “we are sure to

win there, absolutely sure.” Alice Paul in Chicago received reports from

campaigners through the West and all predicted Democratic victory. She

went to Republican Headquarters with these reports, but she could not

convince the Republicans of the truth of them.

Senator Curtis, Secretary of the Republican Senatorial Committee, said

he got more information as to the situation in the West from the Woman’s

Party than he got from any other source.

It became apparent soon that Wilson was going to win. It was then that

advisors came to Alice Paul and said, “Withdraw your speakers from the

campaign, so that you will not have the humiliation of defeat before the

country.”

And it was then that Alice Paul answered, “_No. If we withdraw our

speakers from the campaign, we withdraw the issue from the campaign. We

must make this such an important thing in national elections that the

Democrats will not want to meet it again._”

Commenting on this campaign, Alice Paul said the Democrats made a strong

appeal to the women voters but for the Republicans the women did not

exist, and in fact the chief recognition that the Republicans made of

the women in the West was to send there the Hughes so-called “Golden

Special,” which, on leaving Chicago, announced that it was _not_ a

“Suffrage Special.”

After the campaign was over, Vance McCormick, Chairman of the Democratic

Party, was talking with a member of his committee. He said, in effect:

“Before the election of 1918, we must patch up our weak places. Our

weakest spot is the Suffrage situation. We must get rid of the Suffrage

Amendment before 1918 if we want to control the next Congress.”

* * * * *

The Sixty-fourth Congress met for its second and last session on

December 4, 1916. President Wilson delivered a message which made no

reference to the subject of Woman Suffrage. The Congressional Union,

always having advance information, knew this beforehand. And so on that

occasion, by a bit of direct action, they brought Suffrage vividly to

the attention of President Wilson, Congress, and the whole country. This

was the only action of the Woman’s Party which Alice Paul did not give

out beforehand to the press.

Early that morning, before the outer doors were opened, five women of

the Congressional Union appeared before the Capitol. After a long wait

the doors were opened, and—the first of a big crowd—they placed

themselves in the front row of the gallery just to the left of the big

clock. They faced the Speaker’s desk, from which the President would

read his message. These five women were: Mrs. John Rogers, Jr.; Mrs.

Harry Lowenburg; Dr. Caroline Spencer; Florence Bayard Hilles; Mabel

Vernon. In a casual manner, other members of the Union seated themselves

behind them and on the gallery steps beside them: Lucy Burns; Elizabeth

Papandre; Mildred Gilbert; Mrs. William L. Colt; Mrs. Townsend Scott.

Mabel Vernon sat in the middle of the five women in the front row.

Pinned to her skirt, under the enveloping cape which she wore, was a big

banner of yellow sateen. After the five women had settled themselves,

Mabel Vernon unpinned the banner and dropped it, all ready for

unrolling, on the floor. At the top of the banner were five long

tapes—too long—Mabel Vernon now regretfully declares. At the

psychological moment, which had been picked beforehand, in President

Wilson’s speech—he was recommending a greater freedom for the Porto

Rican men—Mabel Vernon whispered the series of signals which had

previously been decided on. Immediately—working like a beautifully

co-ordinated machine—the five women stooped, lifted the banner, and,

holding it tightly by the tapes, dropped it over the balcony edge. It

unrolled with a smart snap and displayed these words:

MR. PRESIDENT, WHAT WILL YOU DO FOR WOMAN SUFFRAGE?

Then the women sat perfectly still, in the words of the _Washington

Post_ “five demure and unruffled women ... with the cords supporting the

fluttering thing clenched in their hands.”

The effect was instantaneous. The President looked up, hesitated a

moment, then went on reading. All the Congressmen turned. The Speaker

sat motionless. A buzz ran wildly across the floor. Policemen and guards

headed upstairs to the gallery where the women were seated; but their

progress was inevitably slow as the steps were tightly packed with

members of the Congressional Union. In the meantime, one of the pages,

leaping upward, caught the banner and tore it away from the cords in the

women’s hands. “If it hadn’t been for those long tapes,” Mabel Vernon

says, “they never could have got it until the President finished his

speech.”

The episode took up less than five minutes’ time. Until the President

finished his message, it seemed to be completely forgotten. But the

instant the President with his escort disappeared through the door,

every Congressman was on his feet staring up at the gallery.

The Woman’s Party publicity accounts of this episode—multigraphed the

night before—were in the hands of the men in the Press Gallery the

instant after it happened. This is a sample of the perfect organization

and execution of the Woman’s Party plans.

Of course, this incident was a front page story in every newspaper in

the United States that night despoiling the President of his headlines.

It is now one of the legends in Washington that in the midst of the

dinner given to the President by the Gridiron Club shortly after, the

identical banner was unfurled before his eyes.

The following week, at the first meeting of the Judiciary Committee

since the Presidential Campaign, the report of the Federal Suffrage

Amendment was made without recommendation to the House of

Representatives.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

VIII

HAIL AND FAREWELL

TO INEZ MILHOLLAND BOISSEVAIN

“For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime;

Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.”

—MILTON.

Inez, vibrant, courageous, symbolic,

How can death claim you?

Many he leads down the long halls of silence

Burdened with years,

Those who have known sorrow

And are weary with forgetting,

The young who have tasted only gladness

And who go with wistful eyes,

Never to see the sharp breaking of illusion.

For these—

We who remain and are lonely

Find consolation, saying

“They have won the white vistas of quietness.”

But for you—

The words of my grief will not form

In a pattern of resignation.

The syllables of rebellion

Are quivering upon my lips!

You belonged to life—

To the struggling actuality of earth;

You were our Hortensia and flung

Her challenge to the world—

Our world still strangely Roman—

“Does justice scorn a woman?”

Oh! Between her words and yours the centuries seem

Like little pauses in an ancient song,

For in the hour of war’s discordant triumph

You both demanded “Peace”!

And I, remembering how the faces of many women

Turned toward you with passionate expectation,

How can I find consolation?

Inez, vibrant, courageous, symbolic,

Can death still claim you?

When in the whitening winter of our grief

Your smile with all the radiance of spring,

When from the long halls of silence

The memory of your voice comes joyously back

To the ears of our desolation—

Your voice that held a challenge and a caress.

You have gone—

Yet you are ours eternally!

Your gallant youth,

Your glorious self-sacrifice—all ours!

Inez, vibrant, courageous, symbolic,

Death cannot claim you!

RUTH FITCH.

_The Suffragist_, December 30, 1916.

THE most poignant event—and perhaps the most beautiful in all the

history of the Congressional Union—took place on Christmas Day of this

year, the memorial service in memory of Inez Milholland.

Inez Milholland was one of the human sacrifices offered on the altar of

woman’s liberty. She died that other women might be free.

In the recent campaign, she had spoken in Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon,

Washington, Montana, Utah, Nevada, and California. In her memorial

address, Maud Younger said:

The trip was fraught with hardship. Speaking day and night, she

would take a train at two in the morning, to arrive at eight; and

then a train at midnight, to arrive at five in the morning. She

would come away from audiences and droop as a flower. The hours

between were hours of exhaustion and suffering. She would ride in

the trains gazing from the windows, listless, almost lifeless, until

one spoke; then again the sweet smile, the sudden interest, the

quick sympathy. The courage of her was marvelous.

[Illustration: INEZ MILHOLLAND.

In the Washington Parade, March 3, 1913.

Photo Copr. Harris and Ewing.]

At a great mass-meeting at Los Angeles, in October, she was saying—in

answer to the President’s words, “The tide is rising to meet the moon;

you will not have long to wait,”—“How long must women wait for liberty?”

On the word _liberty_, she fell fainting to the floor. Within a month,

she was dead.

That Christmas Day, Statuary Hall in the Capitol of the United States

was transformed. The air was full of the smells of the forest. Greens

made a background—partially concealing the semi-circle of statues—at the

rear; laurel and cedar banked the dais in front; somber velvet curtains

fell about its sides. Every one of the chairs which filled the big

central space supported a flag of purple, white, and gold. Between the

pillars of the balcony hung a continuous frieze; pennants of purple,

white, and gold—the tri-color of these feminist crusaders.

The audience assembled in the solemn quiet proper to such an occasion,

noiselessly took their seats in the semi-circle below and the gallery

above. The organ played _Ave Maria_. Then again, a solemn silence fell.

Suddenly the stillness was invaded by a sound—music, very faint and

far-away. It grew louder and louder. It was the sound of singing. It

came nearer and nearer. It was the voices of boys. Presently the

beginning of a long line of boy choristers, who had wound through the

marble hallway, appeared in the doorway. They marched into the hall

chanting:

“Forward, out of error,

Leave behind the night,

Forward through the darkness,

Forward into light.”

Behind came Mary Morgan in white, carrying a golden banner with the

above words inscribed on it. This was a duplicate of the banner that

Inez Milholland bore in the first Suffrage parade in New York. Behind

the golden banner came a great procession of young women wearing

straight surplices; the first division in purple, the next in white, the

last in gold, carrying high standards which bore the tri-color. Before

each division came another young girl in white, carrying a golden

banner—lettered.

One banner said:

GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN THAN THIS THAT HELAY DOWN HIS LIFE FOR A FRIEND

Another banner said:

WITHOUT EXTINCTION IS LIBERTY, WITHOUT RETROGRADE IS EQUALITY

The last banner said:

AS HE DIED TO MAKE MEN HOLY LET US DIE TO MAKE MEN FREE

These white-clad girls stood in groups on both sides of the

laurel-covered dais against the shadowy background of the curtains. The

standard-bearers in the purple, the white, the gold, formed a

semi-circle of brilliant color which lined the hall and merged with the

purple, white, and gold frieze above them. They stood during the

service, their tri-colored banners at rest.

There followed music. The choristers sang: _Forward Be Our Watchword_.

The Mendelssohn Quartet sang: _Love Divine_ and _Thou Whose Almighty

Word_. Elizabeth Howry sang first _All Through the Night_ and,

immediately after, Henchel’s ringing triumphant _Morning Song_. It is an

acoustic effect of Statuary Hall that the music seems to come from

above. That effect added immeasurably to the solemnity of this occasion.

Tribute speeches followed, Anne Martin introducing the speakers. Mrs.

William Kent read two resolutions: one prepared under the direction of

Zona Gale, the other by Florence Brewer Boeckel. Maud Younger delivered

a beautiful memorial address.

“And so ever through the West, she went,” Miss Younger said in part,

“through the West that drew her, the West that loved her, until she

came to the end of the West. There where the sun goes down in glory

in the vast Pacific, her life went out in glory in the shining cause

of freedom.... They will tell of her in the West, tell of the vision

of loveliness as she flashed through her last burning mission,

flashed through to her death, a falling star in the western

heavens.... With new devotion we go forth, inspired by her sacrifice

to the end that this sacrifice be not in vain, but that dying she

shall bring to pass that which living she could not achieve, full

freedom for women, full democracy for the nation....”

At the end the quartet sang, _Before the Heavens Were Spread Abroad_.

Then the procession re-formed, and marched out again as it had come, a

slow-moving band of color which gradually disappeared; a river of music

which gradually died to a thread, to a sigh ... to nothing.... As before

the white-surpliced choristers headed the procession, chanting the

recessional, _For All the Saints_. Their banners lowered, the girl

standard-bearers—first those in floating gold, then those in drifting

white, then those in heavy purple—followed. From the far-away reaches of

the winding marble halls sounded the boyish voices. Faintly came:

O, may Thy Soldiers, faithful, true and bold, Fight as the Saints

who nobly fought of old, And win with them the victor’s crown of

gold. Alleluia!

And fainter still:

But, lo, there breaks a yet more glorious day, The Saints triumphant

rise in bright array.

The voices lost themselves in the distance, merged with silence. The

audience still sat moveless, spellbound by all this beauty and grief.

Suddenly the _Marseillaise_ burst from the organ like a call to the new

battle. Instantly, it was echoed by the strings.

On January 9, the President received a deputation of three hundred

women. This deputation brought to him the resolutions passed at

memorials held in commemoration of Inez Milholland from California to

New York.

Sara Bard Field said in part:

Since that day (a year ago) 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 a 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 men and women of this 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 that gives them no rest night or day. Every advance of

liberty has demanded its quota of human sacrifice, and, 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, how long, must this

struggle go on?

Mr. President, to the nation more than to women themselves 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

towards 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 grave business he

must perform. The exclusiveness necessary to a great dignitary holds

him away from the democracy of communion necessary to full

understanding of what the people are really thinking and desiring. I

feel that this deputation today fails in its mission if, because of

the dignity of your office and the formality of such an occasion, we

fail to bring to you the throb of woman’s desire for freedom and her

eagerness to ally herself with all those activities to which you

yourself have dedicated your life. When once the ballot is in her

hand, those tasks which this nation has set itself to do are her

tasks as well as man’s. We women who are here today are close to

this desire of woman. We cannot believe that you are our enemy, or

are 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.

[Illustration: JOY YOUNG AT THE INEZ MILHOLLAND MEMORIAL SERVICE.] The

President replied:

Ladies, I had not been apprised that you were coming here to make

any representation 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 there 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 utterance of the last campaign that the Democratic Party is

more inclined than the opposition Party 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 are heart and soul for

this cause seem so greatly to misunderstand and misinterpret the

attitudes 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 concentrated 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.

In Maud Younger’s delightful _Revelations of a Woman Lobbyist_, in

_McCall’s Magazine_, she thus describes that scene:

The doors opened, and, surrounded by Secret Service men, President

Wilson entered. He came quickly forward, smiling as he shook my

hand. Contrary to the general impression, President Wilson has a

very human, sympathetic personality. He is not the aloof, academic

type one expects of a man who, avoiding people, gets much of his

knowledge from books and reports. Though he appears to the general

public as in a mist on a mountain top, like the gods of old, he is

really a man of decided emotional reactions.

I answered his greeting briefly, giving him the resolutions I held,

and presented Mrs. John Winters Brannan, who handed him the New York

memorial without speaking at all. We were saving time for his

declaration. Then came Sara—small, delicate Sara Bard Field, a woman

of rare spirituality and humor—whom we had chosen to speak for us.

She began to talk very nobly and beautifully, while the President

listened cordially. But suddenly a cold wave passed over him. Sara

had quoted Mr. Hughes. At that name, the President’s manner chilled.

The look in his eyes became so cold that, as Sara says, the words

almost froze on her lips. She finished in an icy stillness, and

after a moment the President spoke.

Instead of the assurances we had expected, we heard words to the

effect that he could not dictate to his Party. We must first concert

public opinion. It was his last gleam, for, looking about him and

seeing amazement, disappointment, indignation, he grew still colder.

With a last defiant glance at us all he abruptly left the room.

Secret Service men, newspaper men, and secretaries followed him.

Where the President of the United States had been was now a closed

door.

Stunned, talking in low, indignant tones, we moved slowly out of the

East Room and returned to our Headquarters. There we discussed the

situation. We saw that the President would do nothing for some time,

perhaps not until the eve of the Presidential election in 1920. He

said we must concert public opinion. But how? For half a century

women had been walking the hard way of the lobbyist. We had had

speeches, meetings, parades, campaigns, organization. What new

method could we devise?

------------------------------------------------------------------------

PART THREE

1917

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I

THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

ON THE PICKET LINE

The avenue is misty gray,

And here beside the guarded gate

We hold our golden blowing flags

And wait.

The people pass in friendly wise;

They smile their greetings where we stand

And turn aside to recognize

The just demand.

Often the gates are swung aside:

The man whose power could free us now

Looks from his car to read our plea—

And bow.

Sometimes the little children laugh;

The careless folk toss careless words,

And scoff and turn away, and yet

The people pass the whole long day

Those golden flags against the gray

And can’t forget.

BEULAH AMIDON.

_The Suffragist_, March 3, 1917.

_1. The Peaceful Picketing_

Before we examine the consideration which actuated the National Woman’s

Party in waging the picket campaign of 1917, let us see where President

Wilson stood at the beginning of the war; let us briefly recapitulate

the steps which brought him there.

It will be remembered that, shortly after the President took his seat in

March, 1913, he told a deputation from the Congressional Committee that

Suffrage was a question to which he had given no thought and on which he

had no opinion. During the year, no longer stating that he knew nothing

about Suffrage, he gave as a reason for inaction that the Congressional

program was too crowded to consider it. By the end of the year, he had

reached the point where he stated that he could take no action on the

Suffrage Amendment until commanded by his Party.

In 1914, he continued to state that he was prohibited from acting

because of being bound by his Party until June, when he seized on the

excuse of States Rights further to explain his inaction. In the autumn

of 1915 he first came out personally for Suffrage by voting for it in

New Jersey but still refused to support it in Congress. His next step

forward came in June, 1916, when he caused the _principle_ of Suffrage

to be recognized in the Party platform, though as yet neither he nor the

Party had endorsed the Federal Amendment. In September of that same

year—after the Woman’s Party had begun its active campaign in the

Suffrage States—the President took another step and addressed a Suffrage

Convention of the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association. But as

yet he was not committed to the Federal Amendment, had not begun to

exert pressure on Congress.

The situation of the President and the Woman’s Party at this juncture

may be summed up in this way. Wilson, himself, was beginning to realize

that the Suffrage Amendment must ultimately pass. But he had just been

re-elected. He was safe for four years; he could take his time about it.

The Woman’s Party on the other hand, realized that the President being

safe for four years, no political pressure could be exerted upon him.

They realized that they must devise other methods to keep Suffrage, as a

measure demanding immediate enactment, before him.

In the meantime, a feeling of acute discontent was growing in the women

of the United States. The older women—and they were the third generation

to demand the vote—were beginning to ask how long this period of

entreaty must be protracted. The younger women—the fourth generation to

demand the vote—were becoming impatient with the out-worn methods of

their predecessors. Moreover, when the disfranchised women of the East

visited the enfranchised States of the West, their eyes were opened in a

practical way to the extraordinary injustice of their own

disfranchisement. Equally, the enfranchised women of the West, moving to

Eastern States, resented their loss of this political weapon. On many

women in America the militant movement of England had produced a

profound impression.

A new note had crept into the speeches made by the members of the

Woman’s Party—the note of this impatience and resentment. It will be

remembered that Mrs. Kent told the President that the women voters of

the West were accustomed to being listened to with attention by

politicians, and that they resented the effort to make it seem that they

were merely trying to bother a very busy official. Mrs. Blatch had told

him that the time had gone by when she would stand on street corners and

ask the vote from every Tom, Dick, and Harry; that she was determined to

appeal instead to the men who spoke her own language and who had in

charge the affairs of the government.

Doris Stevens, in an interview in the _Omaha Daily News_ for June 29,

1919, voices perfectly what her generation was feeling.

A successful young Harvard engineer said to me the other day, “I

don’t believe you realize how much men objected to your picketing

the White House. Now I know what I’m talking about. I’ve talked with

men in all walks of life, and I tell you they didn’t approve of what

you women did.”

This last with warmer emphasis and a scowl of the brow. “I don’t

suppose you were in a position to know how violently men felt about

it.”

I listened patiently and courteously. Should I disillusion him? I

thought it was the honest thing to do. “Why, of course men didn’t

like it. Do you think we imagined they would? We knew they would

disapprove. When _did men ever_ applaud women fighting for their own

liberty? We are approved only when we fight for yours!”

“You don’t mean to say you planned to do something knowing men would

not approve?”

I simply had to tell him, “Why, certainly! We’re just beginning to

get confidence in ourselves. At last we’ve learned to make and stand

by our own judgments.”

“But going to jail. That was pretty shocking.”

“Yes, indeed it was. It not only shocked us that a government would

be alarmed enough to do such a thing, but what was more to the

point, it shocked the entire country into doing something quickly

about Woman Suffrage.”

* * * * *

It will be seen by the foregoing pages of this book that Suffragists had

exhausted every form of Suffrage agitation known to the United States.

In particular, they had sent to the President every kind of deputation

that could possibly move him.

They decided to send him a perpetual deputation.

* * * * *

Alice Paul, in explanation of her strategy in this matter, uses one of

the vivid figures that are so typical of her: “If a creditor stands

before a man’s house all day long, demanding payment of his bill, the

man must either remove the creditor or pay the bill.”

At first, the President tried to remove the creditor. Later he paid the

bill.

At ten o’clock on January 10, 1917, the day after the deputation to the

President, twelve women emerged from Headquarters and marched across

Lafayette Square to the White House. Four of them bore lettered banners,

and eight of them carried purple, white, and gold banners of the Woman’s

Party. They marched slowly—a banner’s length apart. Six of them took up

their stand at the East gate, and six of them at the West gate. At each

gate—standing between pairs of women holding on high purple, white, and

gold colors—two women held lettered banners. One read:

MR. PRESIDENT WHAT WILL YOU DO FOR WOMAN SUFFRAGE?

The other read:

HOW LONG MUST WOMEN WAIT FOR LIBERTY?

These were the first women to picket the White House.

* * * * *

The first picket line appeared on January 10, 1917; the last, over a

year and a half later. Between those dates, except when Congress was not

in session, more than a thousand women held lettered banners,

accompanied by the purple, white, and gold tri-colors, at the White

House gates, or in front of the Capitol. They picketed every day of the

week, except Sunday; in all kinds of weather, in rain and in sleet, in

hail, and in snow. All varieties of women picketed: all races and

religions; all cliques and classes; all professions and parties.

Washington became accustomed to the dignified picture—the pickets moving

with a solemn silence, always in a line that followed a crack in the

pavement; always a banner’s length apart; taking their stand with a

precision almost military; maintaining it with a movelessness almost

statuesque. Washington became accustomed also to the rainbow splash at

the White House gates—“like trumpet calls,” somebody described the

banners. Artists often spoke of the beauty of their massed color. In the

daytime, those banners gilded by the sunlight were doubly brilliant, but

at twilight the effect was transcendent. Everywhere the big, white

lights—set in the parks on such low standards that they seemed strange,

luminous blossoms, springing from the masses of emerald green

shrubbery—filled the dusk with bluish-white splendor, and, made doubly

colorful by this light, the long purple, white, and gold ribbon stood

out against a background beautiful and appropriate; a mosaic on the gray

of the White House pavement; the pen-and-ink blackness of the White

House iron work; the bare, brown crisscross of the White House trees,

and the chaste colonial simplicity of the White House itself.

* * * * *

With her abiding instinct for pageantry and for telling picturesqueness

of demonstration, Alice Paul soon punctuated the monotony of the

picketing by special events. Various States celebrated State days on the

picket line. Maryland was the first of these, and the long line of

Maryland women bearing great banners, extended along Pennsylvania Avenue

the entire distance from the East gate to the West gate. Pennsylvania

Day, New York Day, Virginia Day, New Jersey Day, followed. The Monday of

every week was set aside finally for District of Columbia Day.

The New York delegation carried on their banners phrases from President

Wilson’s book, _The New Freedom_.

LIBERTY IS A FUNDAMENTAL DEMAND OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT.

WE ARE INTERESTED IN THE UNITED STATES, POLITICALLY

SPEAKING, IN NOTHING BUT HUMAN LIBERTY.

On College Day, thirteen colleges were represented, the biggest group

from Goucher College, Baltimore. Then came Teachers’ Day; Patriotic Day,

and Lincoln Day. On Patriotic Day, one of the banners read:

DENMARK ON THE VERGE OF WAR GAVE WOMEN THE VOTE.

WHY NOT GIVE IT TO AMERICAN WOMEN NOW?

On Lincoln Day, they said:

WHY ARE YOU BEHIND LINCOLN?

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

RICAN’S HOUR?

On Sunday, February 18, came Labor Day on the picket line. It was, of

course, impossible for wage-earning women to picket the White House on

any other day. They represented not only office workers, but factory

workers from the great industrial centers. Many of them had come from

other cities.

Susan B. Anthony’s birthday, February 15, was celebrated impressively,

although it rained and snowed heavily. Three new banners appeared that

day. The first—big enough and golden enough even to suit that big,

golden woman—bore quotations from Susan B. Anthony:

WE PRESS OUR DEMAND FOR THE BALLOT AT THIS TIME IN

NO NARROW, CAPTIOUS, OR SELF-SEEKING SPIRIT, BUT FROM

PUREST PATRIOTISM FOR THE HIGHEST GOOD OF EVERY CITIZEN,

FOR THE SAFETY OF THE REPUBLIC, AND AS A GLORIOUS

EXAMPLE TO THE NATIONS OF THE EARTH.

The second Susan B. Anthony banner said:

AT THIS TIME OUR GREATEST NEED IS NOT MEN OR MONEY,

VALIANT GENERALS OR BRILLIANT VICTORIES, BUT A CONSISTENT

NATIONAL POLICY BASED UPON THE PRINCIPLES THAT

ALL GOVERNMENTS DERIVE THEIR JUST POWERS FROM THE

CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED.

The third Susan B. Anthony banner said:

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.

On March 2, 1917, the Congressional Union and its Western organization,

the Woman’s Party, met in joint convention and organized themselves into

the National Woman’s Party.

On that occasion, Alice Paul said:

We feel that by combining the Congressional Union and the Woman’s

Party we shall bring about a unity in organization which will make

impossible duplication, difference of opinion, and divergence of

method. By uniting we make, moreover, for unity of spirit in the

whole Suffrage movement, bringing the voters and non-voters together

in a movement in which they should both be integral parts.

The original purpose for which the Woman’s Party, as an organization

confined to women voters alone, was formed, has, we believe, been

served. In the first three years of our work we endeavored to call

the attention of political leaders and Congress to the fact that

women were voting and that these voting women were interested in

Suffrage. But words alone did not have much effect. We found we had

to visualize the existence of voting women out in the West and their

support of the Suffrage Amendment. The Woman’s Party was formed as

one means of doing this.

The Woman’s Party did, I believe, have an effect on the political

leaders. It was very clear, I think, at the convention in Chicago

and in St. Louis that the idea that women were voting and that those

women were interested in the Federal Amendment was at last

appreciated. This November’s election completed our work in getting

that fact into the minds of Congressmen and political leaders. There

is no longer any need to draw a line around women voters and set

them off by themselves in order to call attention to them. They now

enter into the calculations of every political observer.

If we amalgamate and make ourselves one great group of voters and

non-voters all working for the Federal Amendment, the question

arises: What name shall we be called by, the Congressional Union or

the Woman’s Party? Our Executive Committee felt that we ought to

keep the name of the Woman’s Party, because it stands for political

power.

The objections brought against this are, I think, two. First, that

non-voters should not, according to custom, be part of a political

Party; second, that if they are included, that Party will not

command as much respect as would a Party composed solely of voters.

There are non-voters in the Socialist, the Progressive, and the

Prohibition Parties; there is no reason why, if we are interested in

precedent and custom, they should not be in our Party also. As to

the second point: The Congressional Union has the reputation of

being an active, determined, and well-financed organization. When

the political world realizes that this young Woman’s Party has been

strengthened by the influx of twenty-five thousand workers of the

Congressional Union ready to give their service and money it will

consider that the Woman’s Party stands for more power than if formed

of the women of the Western States only.

[Illustration: WAGE EARNERS PICKETING THE WHITE HOUSE, FEBRUARY,

1917.

Photo Copr. Harris and Ewing, Washington, D. C.]

All of us in the Congressional Union feel an affection for it. But

that is no reason for continuing the organization. The Congressional

Union has served a useful purpose, we believe. But now that we have

created the Woman’s Party we ought, it seems to me, to develop and

make that the dominant Suffrage factor in this country because that,

through its name and associations, throws the emphasis more than

does the Congressional Union on the political power of women.

The following officers were elected unanimously at the morning session:

Chairman of the National Woman’s Party, Alice Paul; Vice-Chairman, Anne

Martin; Secretary, Mabel Vernon; Treasurer, Gertrude Crocker. The

executive board elected were: Lucy Burns, Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, Mrs. J.

W. Brannan, Mrs. Gilson Gardner, Abby Scott Baker, Mrs. William Kent,

Maud Younger, Doris Stevens, Florence Bayard Hilles, Mrs. Donald Hooker,

Mrs. J. A. H. Hopkins, and Mrs. Lawrence Lewis.

At that Convention, various resolutions were passed; the most notable in

regard to the attitude of the National Woman’s Party towards the rapidly

developing war situation. That resolution runs as follows:

Whereas the problems involved in the present international

situation, affecting the lives of millions of women in this country,

make imperative the enfranchisement of women,

Be it resolved that the National Woman’s Party, organized for the

sole purpose of securing political liberty for women, shall continue

to work for this purpose until it is accomplished, being unalterably

convinced that in so doing the organization serves the highest

interests of the country.

And be it further resolved that to this end we urge upon the

President and the Congress of the United States the immediate

passage of the National Suffrage Amendment.

It was decided to present these resolutions to the President. Shortly

after, Dudley Field Malone, Collector of the Port of New York, on behalf

of the Woman’s Party, informed the President that a deputation would

visit him for that purpose.

This demonstration was not so much a protest at the failure of the first

administration to pass the Anthony Amendment, or at the adjournment of

Congress without passing it, as a presentation of the demands of the

National Woman’s Party immediately upon the opening of President

Wilson’s second term.

During the first three days in March, Washington filled steadily with

inauguration crowds. When they got off the train, the Great Demand

banner of the National Woman’s Party confronted them, and girls handed

them slips inviting them to the demonstration of the National Woman’s

Party at the White House on Inauguration Day and to the mass-meeting of

the National Woman’s Party to be held that night. Girls also stood in

theatre lobbies, handing out more of these slips. Girls made the rounds

of the government departments, handing out still more. Everywhere great

posters said:

COME TO THE WHITE HOUSE ON MARCH 4.

COME IN THOUSANDS.

Inauguration Day dawned a day of biting wind and slashing rain.

Outside Headquarters was turmoil; inside a boiling activity. Hundreds of

women were preparing to picket the White House. To accommodate them, a

rubber company, hastily summoned, had commandeered one room and was

selling rain-coats; tarpaulin hats; rubbers.

An extraordinary, a magnificent demonstration followed. To the music of

several bands, nearly a thousand pickets circled the White House four

times—a distance of four miles. Vida Milholland, the younger sister of

Inez Milholland, marched at the head, carrying on a golden banner her

sister’s last words for Suffrage.

MR. PRESIDENT, HOW LONG MUST WOMEN WAIT FOR LIBERTY?

The Great Demand banner followed, carried by Mrs. Benton Mackaye:

WE DEMAND AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION OF

THE UNITED STATES ENFRANCHISING WOMEN.

Beulah Amidon carried the Suffrage banner which Inez Milholland bore in

the first Suffrage procession in New York:

“Forward, Out Of Darkness,

Leave Behind The Night.

Forward Out Of Error,

Forward Into Light.”

Behind there came hundreds of women bearing the purple, white, and gold.

They were divided according to States; and before each division marched

the State flag of the division. The drenching rain fell steadily. The

pavements turned to shallow lakes, and the banners—their brilliancy

accentuated by the wet—threw long, wavy reflections on the glassy, gray

streets. They were of course expecting this demonstration at the White

House, and, as though it were dangerous, unusual precautions had been

taken against it. Every gate was locked. The Washington force of police

officers, augmented by police from Baltimore and by squads of

plain-clothes men, guarded the grounds without and within. Gilson

Gardner said the President seemed to think the women were going to steal

his grass roots.

There was no one at the locked gates to receive the women or the

resolutions except the guards; these guards protested that they had not

been ordered to receive either. The women visited every gate, but

received the same answer. The cards of the leaders were finally handed

over to a guard to present at the White House. He tried to deliver them,

but was reprimanded for leaving his post, and sent back. Learning that

the cards would be delivered at the end of the day, as is the custom

with visiting-cards of casual visitors at the White House, the thousand

pickets took up their march again.

Gilson Gardner wrote of this demonstration:

The weather gave this affair its character. Had there been fifteen

hundred women carrying banners on a fair day, the sight would have

been a pretty one. But to see a thousand women—young women,

middle-aged and old women—and there were women in the line who had

passed their three score and ten—marching in a rain that almost

froze as it fell; to see them standing and marching and holding

their heavy banners, momentarily growing heavier—holding them

against a wind that was half gale—hour after hour, until their

gloves were wet, their clothes soaked through; to see them later

with hands sticky from the varnish from the banner poles—bare hands,

for the gloves had by this time been pulled off, and the hands were

blue with cold—to see these women keep their lines and go through

their program fully, losing only those who fainted or fell from

exhaustion, was a sight to impress even the dulled and jaded senses

of one who has seen much.

One young woman from North Dakota I saw clinging to the iron pickets

around the White House, her banner temporarily abandoned, fighting

against what was to her a new feeling, faintness resulting from the

pain in her hands. She was brought to the automobile in which I was

riding before she actually fell to the ground; but after a short

rest she was back in the line, and finished with the others.

There is no doubt that what Gilson Gardner said was true—the weather

gave this affair its character.

People passing by, thrilled by the gallantry of the marchers, joined the

procession. And as Gilson Gardner says, it was not because it was a

pretty sight, or because these women were all young. Anna Norris Kendall

of Wisconsin, seventy-two years old, and the Rev. Olympia Brown,

eighty-two years old, one of the pioneer Suffragists of the country,

both took part.

[Illustration: THE THOUSAND PICKETS TRY VAINLY TO DELIVER THEIR

RESOLUTIONS TO THE PRESIDENT, MARCH 4, 1917.]

[Illustration: A THOUSAND PICKETS MARCHING AROUND THE WHITE HOUSE, MARCH

4, 1917.]

That day, a newly elected Congressman drove about Washington, showing

the city to his wife. He had always been a Suffragist. She had always

been an anti-Suffragist. The sudden sight of the thousand women marching

in the rain not only converted her, but it produced such an effect on

her she burst into tears.

* * * * *

Later, President Wilson sent a letter to the National Woman’s Party,

acknowledging the resolutions presented to him by the deputations of

March 4, and concluded: “May I not once more express my sincere interest

in the cause of Woman Suffrage?”

* * * * *

Congress adjourned on March 3, 1917. The pickets adjourned with it. On

April 2, a Special War Session of Congress convened. The _Suffragist_

gives an interesting description of that interesting day.

Just half an hour before Congress formally opened, the Suffrage

sentinels at the Capitol took their places.... There was tensity in

the atmosphere. The Capitol grounds were overrun with pacifists from

many cities wearing white-lettered badges; and with war advocates,

as plainly labeled, with partisan demands. They swarmed over the

Capitol grounds unmolested, though extra precautions were taken

throughout the day and in the evening when troops of cavalry were

called out. The silent sentinels stood unmoved the while for

democracy while peace and war agitation eddied around them.

The pickets convened with Congress. They continued to stand at the gates

of the White House, but they extended their line to the Capitol. Three

pickets, led by Elsie Hill, took up their station by the House entrance

and three by the Senate entrance. At night—this evoked from the

newspapers sly allusions to the Trojan horse—they used to store their

banners in the House Office Building.

On April 7, the United States declared itself to be at war with Germany.

* * * * *

After war was declared, the Woman’s Party continued—and continued with

an increasing force and eloquence—to demand the enfranchisement of the

women of the United States by Constitutional Amendment. This brought

down upon their heads a storm of criticism; antagonism; hostility. But

Alice Paul was not deflected by it from her purpose. She recalled that,

at the outbreak of the Civil War, Suffragists of that day, were

entreated to relinquish their Suffrage work in favor of war work. They

were promised that, at the end of the war, they would be enfranchised.

Susan B. Anthony complied with great reluctance, carried on, against her

will, by the majority of those who surrounded her.

At the end of the war, the black man was enfranchised. The white women

had been asking for the vote ever since.

* * * * *

Every effort was made to shake this young leader in her fearless stand.

All kinds of people came to her and begged her to give up the picketing.

One strong friend, a newspaper man, said, “It’s as though you opened the

windows and said, ‘There’s a nice big cyclone coming. Come out of your

cyclone-cellars, girls, and let’s go in it!’” Denunciations, violence,

mobs, murders were predicted.

* * * * *

There was no officer of the National Woman’s Party who did not realize

what it meant to go on with such a fight at such a time.

They determined, whatever befell, not to lower their banners; to hold

them high.

* * * * *

Alice Paul announced in the editorial columns of the _Suffragist_, that

members of the Woman’s Party would, if they so desired, work for war

through various organizations, especially organized for war work, but

that the Woman’s Party itself would continue to work only for the

enfranchisement of women.

* * * * *

The eyes of the world were now turned on the White House. Distinguished

men from all over the country visited the President. Foreign missions

came one after another.

Picturesque events continued to happen on the picket line. Arthur

Balfour, the leader of the British Mission, called at the White House to

pay his respects. He was confronted with forty pickets. Their banners

were inscribed with the President’s own words:

WE SHALL FIGHT FOR THE THINGS WHICH WE HAVE ALWAYS HELD NEAREST OUR

HEARTS—FOR DEMOCRACY, FOR THE RIGHT OF THOSE WHO SUBMIT TO AUTHORITY

TO HAVE A VOICE IN THEIR OWN GOVERNMENTS.—President Wilson’s War

Message, April 2, 1917.

This quotation from the President’s words became a slogan among the

Suffragists.

The pickets recalled that when Arthur Balfour used to emerge into

Downing Street, where the English militants were producing a

demonstration, he always wore a bunch of violets in his buttonhole, to

show his sympathy with them.

* * * * *

The spring brought its usual beautiful metamorphosis to Washington. If

the pickets had seemed beautiful in the winter, they were quadruply so

when the fresh green came. Everywhere that luxuriance of foliage,

exquisitely tender and soft, which marks Washington, made an intensive

background for their great golden banners and their tri-color. The

pickets found it a delightfully humorous coincidence that, when they

came to take up their station at the White House, the White House lawns

were ablaze with their tri-color—the white of hyacinths, the purple of

azalea, and the gold of forsythia. The Little White House itself was not

exempt from this burst of bloom. The huge wistaria vine on its façade

turned to a purple cascade; and out of it spirted the purple, white, and

gold of their tri-color and the red, white, and blue of the national

banner. When the French Commission, including Joffre and Viviani, passed

all this massed color, they leaped to their feet, waving their hats and

shouting their approval.

On June 20, the Mission headed by Bakmetief, sent by the new Russian

Republic which had just enfranchised its women, was officially received

by President Wilson. When they reached the White House gates, they were

confronted by a big banner—since known as the “Russian” banner—borne by

Lucy Burns and Mrs. Lawrence Lewis.

PRESIDENT WILSON AND ENVOY ROOT ARE DECEIVING RUSSIA.

THEY SAY “WE ARE A DEMOCRACY. HELP US WIN THE

WAR SO THAT DEMOCRACIES MAY SURVIVE.”

WE WOMEN OF AMERICA TELL YOU THAT AMERICA IS NOT A

DEMOCRACY. TWENTY MILLION WOMEN ARE DENIED THE

RIGHT TO VOTE. PRESIDENT WILSON IS THE CHIEF OPPONENT

OF THEIR NATIONAL ENFRANCHISEMENT.

HELP US MAKE THIS NATION REALLY FREE. TELL OUR

GOVERNMENT THAT IT MUST LIBERATE ITS PEOPLE BEFORE

IT CAN CLAIM FREE RUSSIA AS AN ALLY.

The appearance of this banner produced strange results. A man standing

at the White House gates leaped at it—the instant the Russian Mission

had vanished—and tore the sign from its supports.

The crowd closed in around them. The two women continued to stand facing

them. Nina Allender, who saw this from across the street, said that the

surging back and forth of straw hats as the crowd closed in upon the

women gave her a sense of faintness. “One instant the banners were

there, the next there were only bare sticks.”

Later, a prominent member of the Mission said to a no less prominent

American, “You know, it was very embarrassing for us, because we were in

sympathy with those women at the gates.”

The next day, June 21, Lucy Burns and Katherine Morey carried a banner

which was the duplicate of the one borne the day before to the lower

White House gate. Before they could set it up some boys destroyed it.

The police did not interfere; they looked placidly on. Immediately other

banners were sent off from Headquarters. Hazel Hunkins carried one which

said harmlessly:

DEMOCRACY SHOULD BEGIN AT HOME.

The crowds gathered and surged up and down the street but the two

pickets stood motionless. Nothing happened for a while. Then a man, who

stopped to congratulate Miss Hunkins, was applauded by the crowd. It is

an interesting example of mob psychology that after this applause such

an incident as happened five minutes later could happen. A woman of the

War Department, who had been boasting that morning in her office that

she was going to do this, attacked Hazel Hunkins. She tore the banners

and spat on them. The avenue was crowded with government clerks and they

immediately fell on the banners and destroyed them after a struggle.

Katherine Morey, who was lunching at Headquarters, says in almost

Bunyanesque language: “And I heard a great roar.” She ran towards the

White House gates and saw that the mobs had charged the pickets, had

torn the banners into shreds. The mob then rushed to the other gate,

picketed by Catherine Lowry and Lillian Crans. After a struggle, their

banners also were destroyed. Lillian Crans ran to Headquarters for

another banner, carrying the news of what had happened.

Immediately, there emerged from the Little White House four women led by

Mabel Vernon, carrying purple, white, and gold banners. It was a moment

of tension, and the pickets were white-faced with that tension. This

silent, persistent courage had, however, its inevitable effect on the

crowd. It fell back. Before it could recover from its interval of

indecision, the police met the groups of girls, and conducted them to

their places. Police reserves ultimately appeared, and cleared the crowd

from Pennsylvania Avenue. The pickets kept guard the rest of the day in

peace. One of them even did her war-time knitting.

About this time a prominent newspaper man was sent to Alice Paul by the

powers that be, on a mission of intervention. He told her it was feared

the President might be assassinated by some one in the crowds that the

pickets collected.

“Is the Administration willing to have us make this public?” Alice Paul

asked.

“Oh, no!” was the answer.

Alice Paul replied, “The picketing will go on as usual.”

So now Major Pullman, Chief of Police for the District of Columbia,

called at Headquarters. He told Alice Paul that if the pickets went out

again they would be arrested. Alice Paul answered in effect:

“Why has picketing suddenly become illegal? Our lawyers have assured us

all along that picketing was legal. Certainly it is as legal in June as

in January.” She concluded, “The picketing will go on as usual.”

Major Pullman then told her again that the pickets would be arrested if

they went out.

Alice Paul replied, “The picketing will go on as usual.”

* * * * *

The next morning, June 22, Miss Paul telephoned Major Pullman that the

pickets were going out with the banners. Rows of policemen stood outside

Headquarters. However, that did not daunt the pickets. Suffragists began

to come out; return; emerge again. All this made so much coming and

going that, when Mabel Vernon appeared, carrying a box under her arm,

nobody paid any attention. That box, however, contained a banner. Miss

Vernon crossed to the park and sat down. Presently Lucy Burns came out

of Headquarters and walked leisurely in one direction; a little later

Katherine Morey came out, and strolled in another direction. At a given

moment these two women met at the East gate of the White House. Mabel

Vernon joined them with the banner. They set it up and stood undisturbed

in front of the White House for several minutes. Suddenly one of the

policemen caught sight of them: “The little devils!” he exclaimed: “Can

you beat that!”

The banner carried the President’s own words: “We shall fight for the

things, etc.”

The day before the police had been in a bad quandary. Now they were in a

worse one: it did not seem reasonable to arrest such a banner. One

policeman did, however, start to do so. “My God, man, you can’t arrest

that,” another policeman remonstrated. “Them’s the President’s own

words.” They did make the arrest, though—after seven minutes of

indecision. When the prisoners arrived at the police station Lucy Burns

asked what the charge was: “Charge! Charge!” the policeman said,

obviously much puzzled: “We don’t know what the charge is yet. We’ll

telephone you that later.”

These two, Lucy Burns and Katherine Morey, were the first of the long

list of women to be arrested for picketing the White House. They were,

however, never brought to trial.

_2. The Peaceful Reception_

THE YOUNG ARE AT THE GATES

If any one says to me: “Why the picketing for Suffrage?” I should

say in reply, “Why the fearless spirit of youth? Why does it exist

and make itself manifest?”

Is it not really that our whole social world would be likely to

harden and toughen into a dreary mass of conventional negations and

forbiddances—into hopeless layers of conformity and caste, did not

the irrepressible energy and animation of youth, when joined to the

clear-eyed sham-hating intelligence of the young, break up the dull

masses and set a new pace for laggards to follow?

What is the potent spirit of youth? Is it not the spirit of revolt,

of rebellion against senseless and useless and deadening things?

Most of all, against injustice, which is of all stupid things the

stupidest?

Such thoughts come to one in looking over the field of the Suffrage

campaign and watching the pickets at the White House and at the

Capitol, where sit the men who complacently enjoy the rights they

deny to the women at their gates. Surely, nothing but the creeping

paralysis of mental old age can account for the phenomenon of

American men, law-makers, officials, administrators, and guardians

of the peace, who can see nothing in the intrepid young pickets with

their banners, asking for bare justice but common obstructors of

traffic, naggers—nuisances that are to be abolished by passing

stupid laws forbidding and repressing to add to the old junk-heap of

laws which forbid and repress? Can it be possible that any brain

cells not totally crystallized could imagine that giving a stone

instead of bread would answer conclusively the demand of the women

who, because they are young, fearless, eager, and rebellious, are

fighting and winning a cause for all women—even for those who are

timid, conventional, and inert?

A fatal error—a losing fight. The old stiff minds must give way. The

old selfish minds must go. Obstructive reactionaries must move on.

The young are at the gates!

LAVINIA DOCK.

_The Suffragist_, June 30, 1917.

This hostility in June had worked up suddenly after the five quiet

months, during which the Woman’s Party had been peacefully picketing the

White House. Perhaps their immunity was at first due to the fact that

when the picketing in January began, the people in Washington did not

expect it to last. “When the rain comes, they will go,” Washingtonians

said, and then, as the line still continued to appear, “When the snow

comes, they will go.” But, instead of going with the rain, the pickets

waited for Smith, the janitor, to bring them slickers and sou’westers.

And instead of leaving with the snow, they only put on heavier coats.

The pickets became an institution.

It is true, too, that, though that picket line was a surprise to every

one (and to many a shock) to some it was a joke.

There was one Congressman, for instance, who took it humorously. He said

to Nina Allender, when the Suffragists began to picket the Special War

Session of Congress:

“The other day, a man covered the gravestones in a cemetery with

posters which read: ‘Rise up! Your country needs you!’ Now that was

poor publicity. I consider yours equally poor.”

“But,” replied Mrs. Allender, “we are not picketing a graveyard. We

are picketing Congress. We believe there are a few live ones left

there.”

The Congressman admitted that he had laid himself wide open to this.

But, from the very beginning, there were those who did not consider it a

joke. The first day the pickets appeared, a gentleman—old and

white-haired—stopped to stare at the band of floating color. He read the

words:

MR. PRESIDENT, HOW LONG MUST WOMEN WAIT FOR LIBERTY?

Then he took off his hat, and held it off, bowing his white head to each

of the six silent sentinels. Having passed them, he covered his head

again. But he repeated this reverential formality as he passed the six

women at the other gate.

One Washingtonian took his children out to see the picket line. He told

them he wanted them to witness history in the making.

That first day when the President came out for his daily afternoon

drive, he seemed utterly unaware of the pickets; but the next day he

laughed with frank good-nature as he passed, and thereafter he too bared

his head as he drove between them.

It was the intention at first for these sentinels to keep complete

silence. But, as the throngs hurrying past began to question them,

continued to question them, conversation became inevitable.

The commonest question, of course, was, “Why are you doing this?”

The pickets always answered, “The President asked us to concert public

opinion before we could expect anything of him. We are concerting it

upon him.” The second most popular question was, “Why don’t you go to

Congress?” The answer, “We have—again and again and again; and they tell

us if the President wants it, it will go through.”

That hurrying crowd was made up of many types. In the early morning and

the late afternoon, government clerks predominated. Almost as many were

the sight-seers from every part of the country. Then there were

diplomats, newspapermen, schoolboys, and schoolgirls, and the matinée

crowds. In the streets came the endless file of motor-cars, filled

mainly with women going to teas. Many people pretended not to see the

sentinels. They would walk straight ahead with an impassive expression,

casting furtive, side-long glances at the banners. Again and again, the

pickets enjoyed the wicked satisfaction of seeing them walk straight

into the wire wickets which enclosed the Pennsylvania Avenue trees. At

first, Congressmen tried not to see what was going on. After a while,

however, they too stopped to chat with the pickets. One Congressman told

Mrs. Gilson Gardner that he felt there was “something religious about

that bannered picket line; that it had already become to him a part of

the modern religion of this country.”

Another Congressman, who had been opposed at first to the picketing,

called out one day, “That’s right. Keep it up! Don’t let us forget you

for a moment!”

All kinds of pretty incidents occurred. Once, Ex-Senator Henry W. Blair

visited the picket line. He had been a friend of Susan B. Anthony, and

he made the first speech ever delivered in the Senate in favor of

Suffrage. White-haired, keen-eyed, walking with a crutch and a stick, he

came along the line of pickets, greeting each one of them in turn—ninety

years old.

“And I, too, have been a picket,” said General Sherwood to them.

“I salute you as soldiers in a great revolution,” said one chance

passer-by to the Women Workers’ Delegation on Labor Day. And—struck

apparently by the high spiritual quality in the beautiful procession—a

woman, a stranger to them, remarked to the pickets: “I wonder if you

realize what a mediæval spectacle you young women present. You have made

us realize that this cause is a crusade.”

Workmen digging trenches in the streets discussed the matter among

themselves. Picketing is an institution very dear to the heart of Labor.

These men showed their sympathy by devising and making supports for the

banners. They offered to make benches for the pickets, but agreed with

the women when they said that sentinels must stand, not sit, at their

posts.

When the Confederate Reunion occurred in Washington, many of the feeble,

white-haired men in their worn Confederate grey and their faded

Confederate badges, stopped to talk with the pickets. I quote the

_Suffragist_:

“We-all came out early to see the sights,” said one. “We went three

times around this place, and I thought the big house in the center

was the White House. But we weren’t sure—not until you girls came

out with your flags and stood here. ‘This is sure enough where the

President lives,’ I said, ‘here are the Suffrage pickets and there

are the purple and gold flags we read about down home.’ You are

brave girls.”

One old soldier, hat off, said, “I have picketed in my time. And now

it is your turn, you young folks. You have the courage. You are

going to put it through.”

That was the note many of them sounded. “Girls, you are right,” a

third encouraged them. “I have been through wars, and I know.

You-all got to have some rights.”

Even the anti-Suffragists were moved sometimes. One of them said: “I

have never been impressed by Suffragists before, but the sincerity

you express in being willing to stand here in all weathers for the

thing you believe in makes me think that there is something in the

Suffrage fight after all.”

And yet, Suffragists themselves were occasionally antagonistic. “You

have put the Suffrage cause back fifty years!” said one. She little

suspected that, within a year, the House of Representatives would have

passed the Amendment; within less than two years thereafter the Senate.

* * * * *

People went further than words. Many paused to shake hands. Many asked

to be allowed to hold the banners for a moment.

Once a bride and groom—very young—stopped. The groom talked to one

picket, the bride to another. The man said: “I think this is outrageous.

I have no sympathy with you whatever. I wouldn’t any more let my wife——”

At that moment the little bride came rushing up, radiant. “Oh, do you

mind,” she said to her husband, “if I hold one of those banners for a

while?”

“No, if you want to,” the bridegroom answered.

And she took her stand on the picket line.

Children stopped to spell out the inscriptions, and sometimes asked what

they meant.

Once, a group of boys from a Massachusetts school inquired what the

colors stood for, and asked to have the slogan translated. As by one

impulse, they lifted their hats and said, “You ought to have it now.”

Occasionally, distinguished visitors leaving the White House would smile

their appreciation and approval. On one occasion Theodore Roosevelt

beamed vividly on the pickets, waving his hat as he passed. As the

weather changed and the winter storms began, the gaiety in the attitude

of their audience deepened to a real admiration. With the rains, the

pickets appeared in slickers and rubber hats. This was not, of course,

unendurable. But, when the freezing cold came, often with snow and

swirling winds, picketing became a real hardship. There were days when

it was almost impossible to stand on the picket line for more than half

an hour at a time. At regular intervals, Smith, the janitor, assisted at

times by a little colored boy, used to appear from Headquarters,

trundling a wheelbarrow. That wheelbarrow was piled high with hot bricks

covered with gunny-sacking. He would distribute the bricks among the

pickets and they would stand on them. An observer said that, when the

relay of pickets, leaving at the end of the day, stepped down from the

bricks at the word of command, it was like a line of statues stepping

from their pedestals.

But others—and sometimes strangers—sought to mitigate for the pickets

the rigors of the freezing weather. One woman, coming regularly every

day in her car, brought thermos bottles filled with hot coffee. On one

occasion, a young girl—a passing volunteer—came on picket duty in a coat

too light and shoes too low. While she stood there, a closed limousine

drew up to the curb. A woman alighted and forced the girl to retire to

her car and put on her fur coat and her gaiters. The stranger held the

banner while the warming-up process was going on. She offered to

organize a committee, made up of older women, who would collect warm

clothing for the pickets. In point of fact, the Virginia and

Philadelphia branches of the Congressional Union presented the pickets

with thick gloves, spats, and slickers for rainy days. Thousands of men

and women from all over the country sent suggestions for their comfort.

Official kindness, even, was not lacking. One superlatively cold day, an

attaché of the President invited the whole company of pickets into the

East Room of the White House. The superintendents of the Treasury

Building and the War Department Annex extended to them similar

invitations.

The police were, at the beginning, friendly, not only in words but in

acts. An officer stopped one day, after telephoning at the near police

box, to say: “You are making friends every minute. Stick to it! Do not

give up. We are with you and admire your pluck.” The majority of them

did not like to do what afterwards they had to do.